My perfect heroine:-
1. Over the age of thirty.
No more teenagers! What’s wrong with a woman over thirty? Some of the most beautiful, smart, intelligent and sassy people I know are over thirty. Most are even over thirty-five. I love young people but Jeez, I want to read about someone who is fully formed as a person.
2. Has skills other than looks good.
Why can’t a woman be a heroine for more than just the way she looks. I read so many books where the protagonist is falsely modest while everyone else around her knows that she’s a babe.
3. Does something other than fashion editor, PR, Editor, Journalist or P.I. Running a small gift shop or a book shop café are also out… Talking hen-lit here.
I want my heroine to have a real job. I want to be able to relate to them and I want her to have done something with her life or be about to do something with her life. Oh and being a mother counts as doing something with your life.
4. Guts, fire and/or gumption
Lot’s of it. She doesn’t need saving or rescuing. The male in the book does not need to swoop in and rescue her like some masculine form of deus ex machina.
5. I want her personal relationships to be real
She will not have a zany friend and a beautiful stick thin friend. She can also have male friends and gay friends and lesbian friends and even friends that are older and or younger than her. This is because she is a real person.
Sorry to all the male readers of my blog but it does annoy me in the current proliferation of fiction that all the protagonists are cardboard cutouts that lack emotional depth.
So, what annoys you about the current crop of female or male heroes?
tryingtowriteit 