PARSING THE ROMANCE HERO: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Omega, And On And On. Which one is for you?

My short take on the various categories of hero found in romance novels was published in the July 2014 edition of Keynotes, the monthly publication put out by the New York City Chapter of Romance Writers of America. 

So I thought I'd include it here after a long dry spell of not blogging. Anyway, here goes:  

In the well-known pantheon of Greek letters, the Alpha hero has usually been the type favored by romance writers. You know the kind of guy I mean. He’s big, brawny, in-your-face fierce, brave, resourceful, successful, emotionally distant and, yeah, he always gets the girl. In short, he’s the acknowledged leader of the pack in every way.

           

Back in the day, his type was the hero of choice, the one almost every romance writer used. The touchstone, so to speak, of all things heroic and desirable in a male. Think some early Alphas. Kathleen Woodiwiss’s Wulfgar in “The Wolf and the Dove” or Rosemary Rogers’s Steve Morgan in “Sweet Savage Love.”

           

Then somewhere along the line, some writers and readers began to want something a little gentler and more flexible. And, voilà, Mr. Beta was born. So the guy usually dubbed “best friend of the hero” started to emerge from Alpha Man’s shadow.

           

But, hey, could Beta Boy really carry the heavy weight of a romance novel on his nice-guy shoulders? Or would he be so dang accommodating that he failed to generate any heat in either the heroine or the reader?

           

Maybe most folks didn’t want a hero who was hard as nails, but they also didn’t fancy one who constantly assumed the role of human doormat.

           

Goldilocks certainly didn’t crave either of those extremes. When she invaded the home of the three bears, she chose the comfy bed, the one that didn’t either dislocate her vertebrae with its rigidity or smother her in its deep folds. And no way would she abide porridge that either burned her mouth or turned it into an icicle. She wanted something vaguely approaching the golden mean.

In some sense that’s what happened to our Alpha and Beta heroes: a sneaky semi-merging of the two, with some of us slightly emphasizing one and some the other. It means that those traditionally fierce Alphas now willingly demonstrate their gentle side, while more laidback types (like Harry Braxton in Connie Brockway’s “As You Desire” or Carter Maguire in Nora Roberts’ “Vision in White”) always become take-no-prisoner protectors when the situation demands it.

So in this new incarnation exactly what do you call the hero? Alpha-Beta or Beta-Alpha depending on which type you emphasize? Or does the man deserve a completely different designation.

Well, it seems that romance writers, usually being well ahead of the curve, have already coined a special word to describe the guy. This modern male mashup is now referred to as—ta-da!—what else but Gamma.

So take your place in the spotlight, Gamma Guy—in my humble opinion almost the perfect type of hero. A little more like real men than the usual models because their personalities contain some of everything that would make them good hero material (strength, resourcefulness, intelligence, tenderness and humor), but not too much of anything that would make them either too boring or too abrasive for the heroine to love and keep around long after the author writes “The End.”

LOVE, THE ULTIMATE FOUR-LETTER WORD

My article, FOR A ROMANCE WRITER, LOVE IS…WELL…VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING, was published in the February 2013 issue of KEYNOTES, the monthly newsletter of the New York Chapter of Romance Writers of America. It was subsequently also picked up by the Romancing the Lakes Romance Writers Chapter of Romance Writers of America for publication in their LAKE WAVES NEWSLETTER.

I thought I’d also post it on this blog, so here goes:

FOR A ROMANCE WRITER, LOVE IS…WELL…VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING

Love may be the ultimate four-letter word. Not in a bad way, of course, but in a way that amazes with its ability to grab and hold our attention.

Certainly throughout the ages it has meant many things to many people.  Shakespeare likened it to “a child that longs for everything that he can come by.”  Laurie Colwin glowingly called it “a work of art,” and Ben Hecht more sadly termed it “a hole in the heart.”

Back a number of decades, Erich Segal’s bestselling novel Love Story declared that “love means never having to say you’re sorry.”  To which, someone immediately countered, “On the contrary, love means always having to say you’re sorry.”

Then, of course, there’s the ever-popular, and often snarky, Anonymous, who on various occasions has compared love to a cold (“easy to catch but hard to cure”), equated it to a repeating decimal (“the figure is the same but the value gets less and less”), and insisted it was like a lizard (“it winds itself around your heart and penetrates your gizzard”).

For romance writers, this much-described, and frequently abused, word is always at the forefront of what we do. It’s the bedrock of our storytelling; the core of our plots.

When I began my most recent manuscript, I imagined I was creating a story that traced the growing romantic bond between heroine and hero. It wasn’t until I finally wrote “The End” that I realized the “love” involved in my book dealt not only with their relationship, but with other kinds of love as well. There was the love of parent for child, an emotion so deep it could survive even death. Then it occurred to me that in a strange way even the villains of the piece also acted out of love. Granted the things they did were inexcusable, but as evil and destructive as their actions were, their love was equally real.

For some reason, that surprised me, until I belatedly recognized the basic fact that no matter how it is expressed or who expresses it, love—much more than greed or the desire for revenge—is a chameleon that can exist anywhere and everywhere, giving us free reign to use our imaginations and talents, as we choose to create the best story that is in us.  

On Sunday, December 23, 2012, in the New York Daily News, writer David Hinckley dubbed the 2003 film “Love Actually” the best modern Christmas movie. In part he gives it this title because it possesses the same heartwarming sentimentality as the best-loved old Christmas films and yet also has a more modern sensibility. But in part he lauds it because its many vignettes show and celebrate love in all its guises, from solemn and heartbreaking to goofy  and sweet.

Well, that’s what romance writers do every day. We hop on that chameleon-like emotion and steer it to the happily-ever-after ending of a wild and bumpy ride.

Probably at base we do it because we’re all eternal optimists who want nothing more than to prove that the idea of love-forevermore isn’t just an empty catchphrase. Even in this tumultuous world, it’s still a genuine possibility.