The Buttoned-Down Hero
When I first set out to write "Unloved" I had every intention of creating a brooding, category romance-style hero. Dark eyes, dark hair. Tan. Older. Rich. Sexy.
Cardboard.
Superficial.
Boring.
Somewhere along the way, Jude acquired a past. And a personality beyond the astounding ability of what he kept zipped in his sharply-creased, tailored trousers. And angst began to happen. "Unloved" was first developed as a partial novel, years ago before I understood much about people and relationships. I think some of that naïveté still shows in the bones of the story, especially in main character Nona's youthful reactions to Jude. But the story stalled, and Real Life happened, and the story went into my slush pile where it quietly hibernated.
Fast forward to early 2006. I went through my slush pile looking for potential short stories to polish for submission to the Amber Heat contest at Amber Quill. And up popped "Unloved" from the depths. Something about the basic germ of the story still appealed, so I ran with it. And this time, Jude had dimension and scope as a character. Sure, I depended on a little clichéd Freudian mother-problem to paint Jude with some broad strokes—when you have 12,000 words to get your point across, you'll take a few shortcuts. But I also knew Jude much, much better after years of living, working and loving in the real world.
I knew Jude: He's a "Buttoned-Down Hero."
I spent a lot of years working in Corporate America, where men are men but wow, are they on some tight leashes. Think about it...they must be professionals at all times. They can't give away corporate secrets. They have to wear suits. Ties. Tight, suffocating shoes. And button-down Oxford shirts. They can't say what they mean, because that might mean exposing a weakness in the business world, where the sharks circle regularly looking for blood. They have to work with women they might want to date or know in aspects beyond that of colleagues. Showing a little interest in a female co-worker might put his job at risk.
I married one of those men. That's not to say that Jude is a thinly disguised facsimile of my husband, for he's not. (For one thing, I can't imagine Jude fixing a washing machine transmission while lying in a half inch of water on the basement floor, but my spouse has done that. *grin*) But certainly I understand what it takes to burst the Buttoned-Down Hero from his necktie and buttoned collar and get him to show the heroine (though perhaps no one else) his soft underbelly, his specific vulnerability, his love.
Repressed men make hot characters. I don't mean sexually repressed—I'm writing romance, after all—but emotionally repressed, or constrained by societal pressures. As a writer I get to explore the forces that keep this man in his suit, inaccessible. I always know that he's longing to leave the power tie and wingtips behind and run muscled and sweaty after the heroine, waving his sword or dragging the carcass of a deer behind him as proof of his prowess at providing, but the restrictions that keep him from expressing his feelings are the very things readers like to pry at, find that loose edge and peel back. It's empowering, as women, to think that only we have the key that will open this particular man.
It's exciting for readers to see glimpses, like shafts of light through cracks in the front door, of the hidden interior life of the Buttoned-Down Hero. And what could be more appealing than watching the slow deterioration of this man's personal walls, as the heroine finds her way inside his guard to the rich emotional life locked within? The reward for looking deeper than just the surface is love.
And...really, it works that way in real life, too.
What about you? Is there a buttoned-down hero in your favorite book, or even your own history? What made him especially appealing to you?
Nina
(Crossposted to Nina's blogspot blog, at http://ninamerrill.blogspot.com/
the Amber Quill Press authors' blog at http://aqpauthors.blogspot.com/
and to Nina's LiveJournal blog, at http://nina_merrill.livejournal.com/)
Cardboard.
Superficial.
Boring.
Somewhere along the way, Jude acquired a past. And a personality beyond the astounding ability of what he kept zipped in his sharply-creased, tailored trousers. And angst began to happen. "Unloved" was first developed as a partial novel, years ago before I understood much about people and relationships. I think some of that naïveté still shows in the bones of the story, especially in main character Nona's youthful reactions to Jude. But the story stalled, and Real Life happened, and the story went into my slush pile where it quietly hibernated.
Fast forward to early 2006. I went through my slush pile looking for potential short stories to polish for submission to the Amber Heat contest at Amber Quill. And up popped "Unloved" from the depths. Something about the basic germ of the story still appealed, so I ran with it. And this time, Jude had dimension and scope as a character. Sure, I depended on a little clichéd Freudian mother-problem to paint Jude with some broad strokes—when you have 12,000 words to get your point across, you'll take a few shortcuts. But I also knew Jude much, much better after years of living, working and loving in the real world.
I knew Jude: He's a "Buttoned-Down Hero."
I spent a lot of years working in Corporate America, where men are men but wow, are they on some tight leashes. Think about it...they must be professionals at all times. They can't give away corporate secrets. They have to wear suits. Ties. Tight, suffocating shoes. And button-down Oxford shirts. They can't say what they mean, because that might mean exposing a weakness in the business world, where the sharks circle regularly looking for blood. They have to work with women they might want to date or know in aspects beyond that of colleagues. Showing a little interest in a female co-worker might put his job at risk.
I married one of those men. That's not to say that Jude is a thinly disguised facsimile of my husband, for he's not. (For one thing, I can't imagine Jude fixing a washing machine transmission while lying in a half inch of water on the basement floor, but my spouse has done that. *grin*) But certainly I understand what it takes to burst the Buttoned-Down Hero from his necktie and buttoned collar and get him to show the heroine (though perhaps no one else) his soft underbelly, his specific vulnerability, his love.
Repressed men make hot characters. I don't mean sexually repressed—I'm writing romance, after all—but emotionally repressed, or constrained by societal pressures. As a writer I get to explore the forces that keep this man in his suit, inaccessible. I always know that he's longing to leave the power tie and wingtips behind and run muscled and sweaty after the heroine, waving his sword or dragging the carcass of a deer behind him as proof of his prowess at providing, but the restrictions that keep him from expressing his feelings are the very things readers like to pry at, find that loose edge and peel back. It's empowering, as women, to think that only we have the key that will open this particular man.
It's exciting for readers to see glimpses, like shafts of light through cracks in the front door, of the hidden interior life of the Buttoned-Down Hero. And what could be more appealing than watching the slow deterioration of this man's personal walls, as the heroine finds her way inside his guard to the rich emotional life locked within? The reward for looking deeper than just the surface is love.
And...really, it works that way in real life, too.
What about you? Is there a buttoned-down hero in your favorite book, or even your own history? What made him especially appealing to you?
Nina
(Crossposted to Nina's blogspot blog, at http://ninamerrill.blogspot.com/
the Amber Quill Press authors' blog at http://aqpauthors.blogspot.com/
and to Nina's LiveJournal blog, at http://nina_merrill.livejournal.com/)
posted by Nina Merrill at 7:19 AM
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