Where do (my) heroines come from?
Posted by Bonnie Edwards in Bonnie Edwards, Uncategorized
I’d like to say from the cabbage patch, or even that a stork delivers them in the dead of night, but the truth is, heroines are born in weird and interesting ways.
A lot of times secondary characters scream out for books of their own. Sometimes readers will ask so often about a background character the seed for a new heroine is fertilized. Voila! A connected story comes about.
Connected stories please the readers, editors (and marketing folk) like them and writers get to play in a familiar world again. Readers aren’t the only ones curious about former lead characters. Writers want to know how they’re doing, too.
On occasion heroines appear not from inside a story, but from outside, so to speak.
Take Morgan Swann, for example. She’s my heroine in Possessing Morgan. (March 2010 – seems so far away, doesn’t it?)
I was working on another story entirely. This one was aimed at a different Harlequin line altogether, when I realised my heroine would have known (and still did) people who walked on the far side of the law. Growing up in her neighborhood, it would have been impossible to avoid knowing some rough characters, or schoolmates headed down different, and more dangerous, paths. At some point, her best friend fell into stealing cars.
Fast cars. Expensive cars. Morgan stole for money, yes.
But more for the thrill.
And that, my friends, was a lightning bolt moment.
Morgan Swann never set foot in the story I was writing, but she existed for me. Fully formed. She was feisty, tough and out for herself. She was scared, but loved the thrill of boosting cars, the hunt, the adrenaline rush of excitement.
I loved this teenager. She had her reasons for falling in with the bad crowd: frail, scaredy-cat human reasons. The universality of her need as a powerless teenager spoke to me. She broke my heart.
No sooner had she walked on stage, than I wondered how to make her a heroine. I loved this character too much not to try to give her a happily ever after. Even bad girls can be brought back from the brink. Right?
So, a reformed bad girl who no longer steals cars, but who’s still feisty, still determined and still chasing the thrill.
What better place to write her story, than in a Blaze?
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She sounds like a good one, Bonnie!
So . . . she didn’t reform TOO much did she?
Morgan’s still very much in-yer-face, which is one of the many things I like about her. She may very well say some of the things we’d love to say, but don’t.
Thanks!
This is such a hard question! LOL I could answer more easily I think where my heroes come from, but I think it’s harder to separate out heroines for me. They pop up in my imagination, and I feel like they are all some part of me, even the ones that are very different from me… if that makes any sense. Sometimes I may think of them physically as a celebrity of some sort, or borrow a trait or experience from a friend or from life, but largely my heroines are very organic, I think… I just sort of imagine them, and they grow.
And yes, the secondary character thing… have had that happen. Love it.
Morgan sounds like a handful… but I love characters like that, and I think stories that start with that grounding in character are usually the best — and she does sound like a Blaze babe, for sure.
Sam
The easiest characters for me to write are the ones who walk full blown onto the stage of my mind. Morgan was one of those. I had a hero do that once and he kickstarted my career again…in a way, I knew he was capable of that just by watching him move.
He had the same kind of confidence that Morgan has. Like stage presence I suppose.
Thanks, Sam, I always love your comments,
Bonnie
So very interesting, Bonnie! And I can’t wait to read your Blaze! I love learning about the interconnections, so is the other story one that’s out, too? Reformed bad girl? Those make really cool heroines!