Selling the Sizzle

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

This post is really a comment for the post below. I was replying to Raine, but then I got a little bit wordy and figured I might as well make it a new blog post since I've been reduced to talking about the books I take out of the library once a week!

Comment on Vince:

You know, I've been sorta emphasizing Vince's physicality. Yeah, he's good-looking and has mad skilz, yo in the bedroom, but what really makes him noteworthy is that he's just an all around great guy.

Not perfect and not superman, but he's a widower with 3 little girls and he loves those and you see him really trying to be best father he can for them. He's a got a good relationship with his mom and his sister and he's dedicated to his job as a rescuer.

At one point in the book the heroine calls him 'honorable', and I had to agree, even though I could recall off the top of my head anything particularly honorable he'd done in the story up to that point.

Peeps complain when an author *tells* you something about a character but doesn't show it. I the issue might be not even the necessarily showing of that particular aspect of the character, but that all that you have been shown doesn't jive with the telling.

An author tells us a character is smart, then has them doing dumb stuff, the reader doesn't buy it.

But if an author shows us a character who's decent and a basically good guy person, then some other character tells us that their impression of the first character is that they're honorable, we're likely to buy into it.
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2 comments:

raine said...

Ok, I may have to pick up this book--this guy sounds great. :)

And I would think (sounds like) it's not necessarily a matter of the man running out, slaying dragons, staking vampires, etc., but his attitude about duty, relationships, love, etc. Yes, he does sound honorable.

He also sounds like a man who actually likes women, which may make him more unusual in romance than we'd care to admit...

vanessa jaye said...

I'm reading your comment and nodding, yes to every point.

It's a given that the hero in a genre romance is going to be physically gorgeous 99% of the time.

But if you're reading for more than just the bedroom skills, what makes a 'hero' stand apart from the rest are things like this:

his attitude about duty, relationships, love, etc

And what you really notice about him physically are the hands, the smile, the crinkles in the corner of his eyes, the tenor of his voice, his walk, the aura of confidence and sense of ease and a thousand other little things besides the usual broad shoulders, tight butt, nice package (snort), washboard, etc.

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