Hello! After reading all the mainstream poorly written romance characters, I have become absolutely disappointed. These characters are not just horribly written they are designed to frustrate the audience into bouts of rage. And thus I have decided to do the better thing and write my own character. It appears easier for me to fix the female characers instedad of writing a male charcater. To fix the issues, first I have to point out the issues. I have to use this top down approach where I identify a problem and then write the character backwards so that my character would never create these problems, or instantly solve them if she faces those issues. This is going to take a lot of trial and errors. Hopefully at the end of the day I would end up with the perfcet romance charcter I was looking for. My genre should be fantasy. Add scifi to it. Giving magic powers to my chaarcter only helps her achieve her potential. I would like some help from you guys identifying thhe problems and suggesting powers/personality traits that fix these issues. Now these arent all the offenders, there are obscure fictions stuff I read that most of you wont know. Lets begin with the first problem: Hermoine. Lets identify the problems: 1)Hermoine And Ron came out of nowhere. 2)Hermoine would constantly insult Ron. 3)She violently assaulted Ron with dark magic bird summon spell. 4)Why was Hermoine x Krum included in the story if Ron was the final pairing? its filler and poor wriring and wastes the readers time. I am going to do my best to identify the core issues and create a female charcter that would not face/create these problems. 1 My female character has empathic tracking magic. Basically a 'love radar' so anyone who wants to have a romantic ending gets instantly shown up in radar. This would make sure any romance does not come out of the blue, because she would already know her love interest. 2 Have a decent personality I guess? its not hard to write a character that DOES NOT insult and attack people. 3 See 2. Also if a battle is required my character can have a warrior mentality who loves an honourable battle . She would invite her love interest in ritual combat .Sort of like a mating dance. That can be a family tradition/clan rule for marriage ceremony. This should solve the random bouts of out of the blue violence. 4 Visions? fortune teller? that would mean fortune tellers are a part of the fantasy world she lives in. Good we can have world building and character building in the same topic. Clearly high fantasy is the best setting here. Anyway a fortune teller would accurately tell my female character to not create these terrible filler relationships and not waste the audience's time. Now those are just my opinions and writing tricks to create a good female romance character. Do you agree with this or do you think this can be better? What I am going to do is to elaborate more of these problems I saw in fiction and then create character traits and magic traits that dont allow tham to happen. And then at the end I will 'amalgam' these traits into one personality and that would be the final character. I expect some help that points out inconsistencies and sef conflicting personalities and powers. Thank you.
To be completely candid, after reading your entire opening post I had no idea what you were asking. I am certain that what you wrote made sense to you; it made zero sense to me. Please try again to frame your question in a way that makes it clear to readers exactly what it is that you are asking. For example: Why is this a problem? Don't write scenes in which she insults Ron. You wrote it. Why did she do this? If it's a problem, then don't write that scene. Who is Krum? If Krum is a waste of the readers' time, why did you include that character?
Is the OP talking about their fan fiction universe or actual plot points of Harry Potter? I've never read the books and have only seen a few of the movies.
Romance follows a template or an algorithm which basically gets repeated in various ways through various genres. Its a specific algorithm meant to attract people who enjoy it. removing certain elements from it removes it from the genre and its readers. Romance genre and romantic characters are meant to have flaw (how ever silly they may be) in order for those flaws to be fixed with "the power of love/friendship" these are your points and my critique: "Basically a 'love radar' so anyone who wants to have a romantic ending gets instantly shown up in radar. This would make sure any romance does not come out of the blue, because she would already know her love interest" why? Why is this important, other than eliminating the drama of finding her love. What would make your reader care about your character or the story? If she already knows her love interest... where does this go from here? "its not hard to write a character that DOES NOT insult and attack people" people are not perfect. even nuns get angry from time to time (i went to a university run by nuns, and volunteered at a convent). ALL emotions make a well rounded character, even one who shows anger and annoyance. even playful banter with a few insults thrown in. or else... what is there for readers to care about/like in a character? There have been romantic leads that i absolutely hated the personality of... but thats because the write wrote them in a way that made me feel something about them. "She would invite her love interest in ritual combat .Sort of like a mating dance. That can be a family tradition/clan rule for marriage ceremony." this is really interesting. but, whats the point? what are the stakes? if he beats her, does that mean he gets to marry her? if she beats him, does that mean they dont get married? is marriage even on the table? what is the point of this ritual combat? "This should solve the random bouts of out of the blue violence." I get that you do not want things to happen "out of the blue". you can write your violence or your falling in love and give it a purpose so it doesnt happen at random. there is also a way to write conflict without violence. if you dont want violence because it doesnt fit your plot, dont do it. but it it calls for it and you are trying to find a "nice" way around it with this ritual combat.... its not really working.... "Anyway a fortune teller would accurately tell my female character to not create these terrible filler relationships and not waste the audience's time." again, why not? what is the conflict? Readers want to be taken on a journey. readers want a well rounded character who makes mistakes (in life and/or in love). these mistakes make them better or worse. Most romance readers want an exaggerated human experiences.... so multiple love interests, the "will they/wont they" tension. the possibility of a rival and what that might mean for the existing relationship. Over all, readers want character growth. There is a Korean romcom thats on my list of things to watch called Love Alarm. the premise is that people who like each other get alerted on their phones when that person is in the vicinity. this premise alone takes away the "filler" relationships and the "out of the blue" love. HOWEVER, the conflict in this series is, what happens when you get multiple alerts or what happens when you get an alert to someone but you have feelings for someone else? There are also personal problems the romantic leads face that add to tension/drama/conflict. in short... there is no perfect romantic female character. they are all written to be imperfect for a reason.
Harry ... Who? Confession -- I did get dragged to one of the Harry Potter movies, by my daughter. I managed to sit through it. It made no sense and was not at all entertaining.
It's not my favorite series, either, but my children, especially my daughter, were exactly the right ages as the books and movies appeared, so I am more familiar with the franchise than I'd normally be. I remember thinking the first movie would never freaking end. Daughter is now 29, still loves HP, and recently finished reading the series out-loud to her husband. She was writing fan fiction at eight or nine. My grandson and I made it part of the way through the third book before we both decided we were bored stiff. Different strokes...
I haven't read all of the thread, I didn't even finish reading the opening post, and I don't know much about romance stories. But it seems to me a romance character needs to have some problems so they can be solved by the end. Not only in romance, but all kinds of stories. If a person is perfect from the beginning, then how do you have a story at all? A story is about someone running up against some inner issue, discovering how intractable it is, and needing to smash themselves against it again and again until they manage to change themselves, or rather the crisis demolishes them and rebuilds them in a better form, capable of dealing with the issue now. This is the heroic quest, the journey through the underworld where you're destroyed as the imperfect person you currently are and rebuilt without that particular issue. It's the symbolic death and rebirth that's central to Western civilization.
"Perfect" is relative. Every man has his individual vision of a perfect woman, just as each woman has a personal picture of her perfect man. But people are never perfect, we are loaded with flaws. Many relationships, at least when they are working, are a series of compromises with each other's flaws. So your "perfect female romance character" may be completely repulsive to me, she just doesn't fit into my ideal of the perfect woman. All I want is an interesting character to whom I can relate and through whom I can vicariously share their fascinating adventures. Harry Potter may not appeal to you, but that doesn't make the characters or how the books are written wrong, or bad, or whatever word you want to use. Quite obviously there are a few people to whom those books and the movies have great appeal; enough people to make JKR a billionaire. (BTW, I've seen multiple Ron/Hermione relationships over the course of my life.)
While I don't normally recommend Romance books, since I've read a few and 99% of the time, they are not all that good. Most involving the 'average' woman getting the uber rich ass hat... Bet Me is actually grounded in reality (sometimes a bit too much so), and is a good representation of a more 'normal' relationship. It has oddity, and the two leads have their differences. It's almost like Jennifer Cruise understands and knows how to write the average pretty darn good. (I know we ribbed it pretty hard back in the day in the Sci-fi geeks read romance, but come on, at the end of the day it isn't that horrible a read. Just a bit too much padding for the story that it is.) Point being, stop trying to make perfect, since that is a subjective concept that isn't possible. People have flaws, and flawed people hook up and have relationships. Just write the characters that you want to read about, since there a plenty out there that you don't care for. Kinda a point in taking up writing is to write the stories you want to read. May not be everyone's cup of tea, but you will find your audience. Good luck and happy writing.
Well the template has led me down so far and what it has produced has become repetitive and eventually degenerated into nonsense to the point that I have decided to go against. As for removing certain elements, this is to help establish what can or cannot be remove while making the whole thing work. So the probem is elimination of drama? Since the problem is the elimination of drama, and not the radar. We can tweak the radar to the point it still allows drama while being its own thing. a Radar has: Range, precision, depth. Lets set the radar to a range of 20 meters. For preceision the radar would just ‘inform’ the protagonist that “hey this person likes you” and depth would be an an amount to how much that person likes you. Now notice how this points our protagonist in the right direction while allowing drama to happen. She still has to do the work of painstakingly communicate with every ‘candidate’. And this isnt even getting into animals , like if a dog is fond of her and shows up in the radar. And she is like “oh great not again”. Also due to the limited range she has to wonder ‘what if someone better is waitng for me outside of my Range” Are you confusing self defense with irritable personality? because my charcater is written to punch someone back when under attack. If you ask for an irritable personality thats just a hard no. I do not intend to write an insufferable personality that I myself would end up hating and would sabotage out of spite. So you are asking to inpliment stakes, and ulterior purpose to the combat? Okay we are going to utilize the fact that our protagonist. (We need a name for the protagonist. Lets go with Margot) Since Margot has the radar that has an effective range of 20 meteres, anyone who is a potential suitor in that range will ring the bell. Now as established potential interests arent final. So she has to approach them, and then build up a connection and eventually challange them into a fight. The purpose of the fight isnt to win or lose. Is to determine how good is the person in a combat situation, brave, restpectful etc. Suppose Margot found Felix. Actually Felix found Margot, but here Felix wants to marry Margot. Good stuff. Now Margot dosent know if Felix is another Ron or worse , Dudley. Margot has to challenge Felix into a duel. If Felix fights honourably, and displays good sportsmanship,( lets face it we dont want Margot to mary someone who just cut off her arm in a duel.) Then she consults the fortune teller. Adding more suspense. Okay so lets assum Felix performed hounorably in the combat section. But the fortune teller says there is someone better out there. But Felix here has found a wonderful person in Margot and refuses to let her go. Margot is faced with the choice to abandon Felix and go after some other prince charming. Upon further communication with the fortune teller, Margot finds out that the fortune teller isnt always accurate . Now Felix offers Margot that he can out duel any other prince-charming caricature she might run into. Margot accepts the challenge. If Felix can beat the fortune tellers prince charming then Margot will marry him. And so they set on a journey. Felix here wants to duel against fate to prove he is the best. And win win for Margot. They can grow in character during their journey. Now do you think the Margot story would be any good? I dont understand this but okay. I dont get the flawed character trope. Why does someone need flaws forced ito their charcater? its fantasy make whatever that looks fun. I think people are confusing 'flaws' with 'not boring'. You can have interesting funny charcater and no need to insert flaws in to please some non existent audience. Also 'flaws' themselves are relative so something that might be perfect in someone's eyes can be heavilly flawed anyway so no need to have flaws for the sake of flaws. I suggest watching Brandon Sandersons guide to buiding characters Sanderson is a fantasy writer sho has written many different books. Here he discusses the difference between flaws, limitations and personalities:
its not just a trope... its human nature. we ALL have flaws. if we are trying to make our characters relatable to the average human, they need flaws too. however big or small. one of my personal flaws is that im a perfectionist. how is this a flaw? how does this add conflict to my daily life? when I was dating, it lead me to put too much expectations on people. i realized that being a perfectionist in SCHOOL settings is not always the best when it came to people. and it set me up for drama. another personal flaw is that I stutter. how does this add conflict in my daily life? it has made/makes me shy away from certain situations. important situations. like saying my wedding vows in front of an entire audiences. my sister's flaw is that she is TOO nice and TOO accepting. its led her into situations where she's been hurt emotionally. she feels deeply about every little thing and has emotional breakdowns because of it (my aunt's cat killed a bunny, and my sister cried her eyes out and was depressed all weekend). you yourself have flaws. flaws dont have to be these massive thing. in my romance, my main character's flaw is that she doesnt trust people. its not out of the blue. this mistrust of people developed over time (kind of like if an animal is abused, it becomes weary of people in general because it fears abuse). because of this, she develops anger issues and is volatile when confronted (cornered bear analogy). her character growth is learning to trust and becoming vulnerable enough to let someone through the anger and hate. when you make the character, you dont make them with then intention of giving them flaws. you build their personality and who they are. flaws should come naturally to the character because, as I've stated and others above have stated: no one is perfect
you contradict yourself on these two points. Dont get me wrong, i like this plot! but YOU said you didnt want any unnecessary romance and you wanted her to already know her love interest. Well, in the scenario you gave, Margot has 2 love interests and she doesnt know which one is the right one. Felix or the one the Fortuneteller prophesized. lets completely scrap the Harry Potter examples because that is not a Romance (it may have romantic elements but is not a romance). And, to be honest, I've never read them. I've seen all the movies and i can say just from watching the movies that Victor Krum was only used as a plot device to further the tension between Ron and Hermoine. basically, how to get them to reveal to the audience that they have feelings for each other WITHOUT saying they have feelings for each other (spoiler: Ron's getting jealous, and Hermoine getting upset when he acts all pissy) ETA: " She still has to do the work of painstakingly communicate with every ‘candidate’"..... so you're saying she still doesnt know for certain who her love interest is and has to kiss a few frogs in order to figure it out? ANYWAY: most romances have love triangles ("Margot"/"Felix"/Other person). In most cases, its to further the relationship between the main pairing. Why did people read Twilight if the Bella/Edward outcome was obvious? because there was the POSSIBILITY of Jacob. Jacob's presence added to the romantic tension between Bella and Edward. these love interests just dont happen out of the blue (sometimes they do and it makes no sense... but thats not the fault of the genre, but the person writing the genre)
I'm a little confused, Erin. Are you proposing a female character who is a rose without thorns and who will go through the story successfully meeting challenges and steadily growing in wisdom with the love of her life at her side?
The fact that you feel you need to go into fantasy to "solve" these "problems" should tell you something. Romance has these obstacles and the characters behaving in silly ways....because people are silly when they're in love (or just crushing on, or sexually attracted to someone). Yes, a lot of it is written badly. Apply Sturgeon's Law (90% of any genre is crap), and then use reviews and blogs to filter out ones you like. I'm quite fond of this one: https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/reviews/ But you'll notice, most authors who write good romances don't do it by "solving" the conflict with handwavium. They do it by writing the conflict well. By developing the characters and making it so that even when they're acting irrationally, the audience understand them well enough that they can understand why they're behaving this way. What sprang to mind for me was an episode of the old TV show This Life, where two characters finally get together, have sex....and then screw it up the day after, and torpedo a promising relationship where they'd have been great for each other. But because we know them, can perfectly see WHY they're sabotaging themselves--growing insecurities about if they can trust each other, panic at having been so intimate and vulnerable, self-doubt causing them to doubt something nice could have happened to them, etc. And it's relatable, because most of us will have that same sort of experience of fearing being vulnerable in front of someone we're attracted to. See, none of that is inherently bad, and some of it sounds like good worldbuilding....but it's probably not going to work very well if your aim is to "solve" romantic problems. Especially if most of those problems are very uncommon in the romance genre as a whole ("random bouts of out of the blue violence"). Yes, you can use the limitations of those powers to create additional tension, but then you're back to throwing obstacles in the path of the character getting together with her true love, and you haven't actually changed the basic formula of "lead wants to find her true love, but has problems doing so". Also, none of this is going to solve all possible romantic problems. What if she's super compatible with two different people? What if her love interest has a physical disability and can't fight her? What if she falls out of love over time? Just about the only one that's necessary out of those four is "have a decent personality". And again, that's all you need to write a good romance, and that's the one thing that a lot of bad romances get wrong. Write both your leads as deep and interesting people with consistent characterisations. It's okay for them to have flaws or sabotage themselves if the audience knows them well enough that they can understand why they're doing this self-defeating thing. Personally, I think it's doomed. Your lead will probably not feel like an interesting person if you've designed her to prove a point about what's wrong with romance writing. She'll feel like a message in the barely-plausible guise of a character and if she's not believable as a person, there will be little reason to be invested in her finding happiness, especially if so many obstacles just conveniently move out of her way. If you want to explore the impact of fantasy love-finding measures on a relationship, that's cool! But the relationship needs to be convincing in itself. Again: Write two believable people. You need nothing else.
If you noticed, Margot is already flawed. Shes already got Felix but now she wants better boyfriend. Like she thinks the grass is green on the other side. Also she is deluded that prince charming's are all good people but in reality they might turn out to be toxic abusive people. Margot is too powerful and nobody beats her in a 1v1 duel. At least in that province. Felix just performed the best amongst the other clowns. I can have the clowns form a sort of stalker groupie of Margot. Like they got rejected and have now formed the 'boys rejected by Margot' club. They are especially salty of Felix because he has been the most successful so far. This is exactly the sort of stupid I intended to avoid, and this is why I brought up HPotter in the first place. Margot is written to be the antithesis of this mess. Lets say one of her Stalker Groupies, . .. Jason. When Jason approached Margot Jason: I love you. Margot: Good. Now show me that your love will remain true in fire, death, blood and doom. Jason: huh? Margot: Pick up your weapon and uphold your honor in glorious combat. I dont have all day. When Jason got hiss ass beat, he would join the back of the line of Stalker Groupies that failed. Now this prevents any Krum situation from happening in he first place. I adjusted her magic radar to be only accurate enough to point her to the right direction but weak enough to allow narrative tension. The 'kiss the frog' moments is her testing Jason and being disappointed at his poor display of combat skills. Thats a good ending. The lover I sought was with me all along. That kind of makes Felix this "backup plan" if magic prince charming turns out to be a horrible person. Meanwhile Felix stays protective of her, and would even sabotage other potential suitors to make them look bad so that in the end Margot chooses her.
You can write a strong female character without making her argumentative or insulting. Your post reminds me of my least favorite romance plot where the couple fight with each other until the end and suddenly realize that they loved each other all along. A story is built by keeping a character from getting what he or she wants, but that frustration doesn't have to be antagonism between the romantic characters. The empathic tracking magic needs clarification--it definitely feels at odds with a warrior mentality. Exactly how powerful is it? In this case, being an empath should in some way work AGAINST her. Maybe the guy she loves has no romantic inclination at all or he is in love with her but somehow blocks her magic, so she thinks she knows how he feels and really doesn't. Maybe he has a reason for this...lots of possibilities there. Maybe being a warrior is forced on her and her empathy is a secret that must be hidden. I would think that if you could feel the other's pain, you would never use a sword or weapon again. What would make her want to fight?
Development! I realized that I need a fantasy world for this journey to work without looking like bad twilight fanfiction(which it might just be). The components of a world are: Map, people, factions, geography, nations and their interconnected politics. Margots personal journey would eventually have to coincide with the greater lore of the world, where a resolution is reached after Margot gets involved. Simultaneously the greater conflict has to end Margots personal journey so that the entire sequence of events remains coherent. These people also have magic powers based on a 'worship' system that empowers its practitioners based on which abstract entity they worship. Explaining Margots empathic tracking.
So the female character can sense who wants to have a relationship with her, doesn't have to work very hard to get it, has no flaws and can overcome anything in her way. Wouldn't it be nice if real life was like that? It's not an interesting character. Characters are interesting because they have flaws and challenges to overcome.
A good character arc is what makes for compelling story and character. The problem with a perfect character is they don't have a character arc. In order to have an interesting arc, the character must be flawed in the beginning (as we all are). It's watching them struggle, gradually figure out what they need to do, and go through all the trials necessary to accomplish it that make a character relatable and inspiring. A character that doesn't have to struggle (like we all do) isn't interesting or realistic. What is there for them to do? How can they grow?
Ran across this video just now and remembered this thread. This advice of course works for male characters as well—ultimately it makes no difference if they're male or female, a good character is a good character:
