Shades of Gray

First, a thank you to the lovely Cigar ladies for having me here today.

I have this way of thinking about characters and I should probably define it, since most of you don’t have the scariness of being inside my head. It’s my whole shades of gray character scale. A character who is all bad, totally unredeemable, is black on my scale. A perfect character with no flaws (and there are some out there) is white. Both those extremes? Bore me. I much prefer all the different grays in characters.

When I sit down to create a character, whether it’s my hero or heroine or a secondary, I find myself thinking “what do I want the reader to feel about this character?” Obviously, in category romance, we generally need our readers to like our hero and heroine from the start (though that’s not necessarily true in single title books. I LOVE when an author makes me cheer for a character I didn’t love from page one.)

Even the hero and heroine can’t be all good or pure white. If the hero is perfect, you can count on me not reading the book to the end. Give me brooding, wounded, or even just your average screwed-up male any day. And the heroine? I rarely see what I consider “perfect” heroines. Seems we female romance writers have no problem giving our female characters flaws a-plenty.

Beyond the hero and heroine, though, everyone needs a specific shade. The best way for me to show what I mean is by using my own stories, mostly because I’m brain-dead and incapable of analyzing someone else’s writing right now. *g*

In The Boy Next Door, which is my current release from Superromance, I was most cognizant of the gray shade question with two characters.

The first is the heroine’s father. In short, he’s a big reason the heroine can’t get together with the hero…because he hates the hero’s family (with somewhat of a good reason—hero’s brother killed his wife in a drunk-driving accident.) My challenge was to make the reader empathize with Dad enough to understand why the heroine cares what he thinks, but not make the reader like him BETTER than the heroine or understand his viewpoint MORE than they understand the heroine’s. He couldn’t be a dark gray because then why would the heroine give a rat’s ass what he thinks? And he couldn’t be too light gray because then readers might think the heroine is a mean evil girl.

Same challenge with the bad guy of the story. Keep in mind I don’t write gritty suspense, so my bad guys aren’t killers or psychos. The “bad guy” in The Boy Next Door is Josh Rundle. He’s an alcoholic who killed the heroine’s mother. He can’t pull himself out of his downward spiral, even when he finds out he has a child who needs him. Sounds pretty dark gray so far, right? Well, I hope I lightened his shade a bit by letting the reader get to know him beyond what the world in the story sees. He has very low self-esteem, has always felt like his brother (the hero) is much more competent than him, and yes, he wishes like hell he hadn’t killed somebody while driving under the influence. He’s terrified of parenthood because he knows he’s not good enough, knows he’s not a role model.

I’ve actually had a reader ask if I was going to write Josh’s story. She said she just knows that deep down he is redeemable. I had similar feedback to my “bad guy” in my first book as well. As a writer, I would absolutely love the challenge of redeeming my bad guys…because really, a few years and some good life lessons, and just about anyone can lighten their shade of gray, can’t they?

I’d love to hear how other writers approach this or if they give it much thought (in other words, am I a freak? *g*) And I’d love to hear from readers…what are some complex characters that really hit home with you, whether they were intended to be “good” or “bad”?

I have a signed copy of The Boy Next Door that I’ll send to one person who comments here (need to be a registered user to qualify!). Winner to be announced Monday evening!