WRITING HEROINES
Following on from my blog last Monday where I
talked about writing heroes, this post looks at the heroines.
Unfortunately, even more so than having younger
male characters, readers like to read about younger heroines. Although some
people have professed strongly that they like reading about older women, it
doesn’t relate to book sales.
Why? Because the readership for erotic romances
is mostly woman – and mostly women over 35, who are likely to be in a relationship/married
and who want to imagine what it was like to fall in love all over again.
Now, there is nothing to say that women over 35
can’t fall in love (and do!) but readers like to recall the delights of first
love. I even had one publisher say they don’t want female characters with any
baggage – so no divorcees. That isn’t to say these sorts of books aren’t
written – but are they the most successful from that author?
Out of my 20 MF/Menage books, only four have
older women – and none of those have sold particularly well in comparison. Out
of 30k books I have sold, 20k of those sales have heroines in their twenties such as in Submissive Training.
In addition, readers like to forget about any
middle aged body issues or issues caused by having children. So no wrinkles, no
hot flushes, no weak bladders (and definitely no references to periods – have you
ever read of a heroine in a BDSM story who starts leaking blood while tied up?
Having, said this, in Kink After Dinner
I do have a heroine who refers to her hot flushes. I may have put off any potential
readers, though!)
And rarely do the female characters have
children at the start of the book – unless they are a baby and it invariably
turns out to be the hero’s secret baby. Why? Children get in the way of the
characters having sex! My only heroine with kids is Beth in Kink After Dinner and hers are pretty
much grown up. I deliberately wanted to write about a woman of a similar age to
myself (in my fifties) for a change. (I know - she doesn't really look in her fifties on the book cover, does she! There are limited stock images of older women).
Add to this another dimension – the reader likes
to put herself in the heroine’s shoes and when she does she likes to fantasize
that (in addition to being young again), she is beautiful with a fantastic
figure and she has long flowing locks (or short elfin look if you are reading
this and you hate your long hair) – colour will depend what you have always
dreamed of. Me, personally – I would love to have long blonde hair but it doesn’t
suit my colouring or my frame (my hair if very thick and coarse when long) so I
love to read about blonde heroines. Oh, and if you are short, like me, you will
want your heroines to be tall and leggy. If you are tall and leggy, you may
want your heroines to be petite. Those who are flat chested may want to read
about curvy women and vice versa.
It’s hard to get the right mix. I deliberately
try to change my female characters so they aren’t all tall busty young blondes
despite my own fantasies. I even had a skinny heroine who was taller than the
hero in The Sub Who Switched. I just
felt like being realistic for a change (not one of my bestsellers!). However,
you can’t go wrong with a tall beautiful blonde with flowing locks and gorgeous
figure.
What about heroines’ careers? At least we have
some leeway here – with the heroes, readers want the men to be leaders – so kings
or CEOs or well paid jobs such as lawyers. But for the women we authors can be
more creative – I’ve had an women who run an art gallery, the owner of a bar, a
sports coach, schoolteachers, administrators, and a Christmas fairy, amongst
others!
Now, I’ve talked about their looks and their
jobs, but what about their personalities? Readers generally want strong
dominant men – so that implies the women are submissive but if you make them
too much like a doormat they lose their personality. If you make them too
feisty, particularly in a BDSM story, readers will complain they are too
bratty. My favourite female characters
(either to write or read) are the ones where the man has his work cut out. I
had great fun writing Rebecca in The
Submission Challenge – where the heroine has the challenge of submitting
for 24 hours even though she thinks it is against her character (it was a
challenge for the hero, too!).
And in Bounty
Hunters’ Captive I was giggling as I came up with one liners for Felissa. “You have shit chance of me being either compliant or your slave.”
Or maybe I am just using my characters to say what
I would say! Either way, whether tall or short, dark or blonde, young or old –
I will continue to write the characters that beg to be created.
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