“Strong” Romance Novel Heroines are Too Angsty
Ugh! So I’ve been reading a lot of romance lately to familiarize myself better with the genre. As you may know, I am currently working on a romance, so I thought it was a good idea to see what they hittin fo. But dude! A lot of these heroines overthink EVERYTHING! I mean everything! Here’s an example:
Why was he buttering her toast? Did he think she was too helpless to butter her own toast? Maybe he thought she was helpless in general! Maybe that’s why he said he would always take care of her because he didn’t think she could take care of herself! He didn’t love her, he just wanted to help her! She was just a project for him! Nothing he’d said to her during last night’s mind-blowing sex was real! Even though it had been so real to her. “I can butter my own toast,” she informed him stiffly. Inside her heart was shattering into a million pieces. *
Girl! Calm down! He’s just being a nice guy! You let him “butter your toast” last night, let him butter your actual toast this morning! Stop overthinking it!
You can’t call a heroine strong and independent when she is falling apart emotionally and taking offense at the smallest things! Even worse? Some so-called “alpha males” in these books are quite emotionally fragile and can have emotional breakdowns over some pretty ludicrous stuff as well. How are you a billionaire martial artist who rides a Harley and is ex-special forces but you don’t know if you can go on because when you finally told her you loved her, the tone she responded in sounded “distant” when she said I love you too?
I understand that inner and outer emotional conflict are both crucial in a good romance, but to those authors filling their novels with pages of angst-ridden inner monologs, PLEASE have your characters pick their battles. They don’t have to lose the will to live after every statement or gesture from the object of their affections.
*I wrote that scene to illustrate my point (because believe it or not this is not a huge exaggeration of the inner angst the heroines go through in a lot of romance books today) but as you all can see I have a clear grasp on the genre so the romance I’m currently writing is guaranteed to be a hit!