Welcome to week 19 of the MFRWauthor 52-week Blog challenge. This week’s prompt is The ideal romance hero.
Obviously, everyone is going to have a different response to this prompt. The infinite variety available is one of the best things about books. Whatever your personal likes or dislikes, your background, your must-haves and your must-never-dos, there’s someone in the world writing a book that will fit your needs.
Coming from a history of abusive relationships, (long story. Check out my recent post about writing Keeping Her Safe if you want to know more) I’m kind of fussy about my romance heroes. I like a romance hero who is strong, but I’m not a fan of brute strength. He has to know his own mind, but he has to be able to listen and to compromise. The minute a romance hero slips into “iron fist rules” mode, he’s lost me.
He should have a sense of humor. In fact, for me, he must have a sense of humor and he must be able to laugh at himself. He can laugh easily with others, but never at others. He should at the very least be kind to small children and animals. He may not know what to do with them, but he should be kind.
He should be intelligent and good at what he does, but he can’t be arrogant. I don’t care so much what he does, as I care about his attitude toward it. Whether he’s a Navy SEAL or an auto mechanic, a doctor or the maintenance guy at McDonald’s matters less to me than what kind of guy he is. He should be open-minded and willing to at least consider new ideas, but he also has to stand firm in his personal moral convictions. Sometimes this is a fine line to walk. He should exhibit confidence, but not cockiness–unless that’s part of his character-arc in the story. But none of this should lead you to think that I need him to be carefully politically correct. I think our obsessive need to make sure heroes and heroines always say, do, and think the right thing makes for some horribly boring characters.
For me, a roma
nce hero must be physically attracted to his heroine, of course, but he must also be attracted to the qualities that make her her, apart from her physical attributes. He needs to see, recognize, and admire some of her character strengths, not just her smoking hot body. In fact, if the only memories a hero has of his old flame involve them having sex, I’m done. His memories can include memories of them having sex, but his memories can’t be exclusively about sex, or I stop believing that he actually cares about her as a person, and then I’m through with him. If he loses me, it’s almost impossible for him to win me back. I’m a pretty tough sell.
Turnabout is fair play, though. What he looks like matters very little to me. I don’t require that my ideal romance hero have a particular body type, haircut or eye color. Sexy for me is less about the outside than it is about what’s going on inside a person.
Who are some of my favorite romance heroes? It’s really hard to pick and choose, and I’m afraid that if I name names I’ll forget someone important, but I’ll give it a shot. One of my favorite romance heroes is Kendrick de Piaget from Lynn Kurland’s wonderful Stardust of Yesterday. One of the first romances I was able to read after leaving my abusive relationship was Barbra Delinsky’s The Passions of Chelsea Kane, so Judd Street will always have a soft spot in my heart, and Cal Bonner from Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ classic Nobody’s Baby But Mine is a favorite.
Who are some of your favorite romance heroes? I’m sure I’ve missed meeting many wonderful romance-y guys, so I’d love to know who you like best.
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Sherry Lewis 
Oh gosh, I have to go reread Nobody’s Baby but Mine. What a great book that was!
I agree with you on all your points. A good sense of humor is key. They need to be able to laugh and have fun together.
Agree with the PC vibe in today’s novels. It is pretentious and boring.
And a sense of humor is important, but ‘writing’ humor isn’t that easy, though I try to be as subtle as I can, a lot of times it goes right over the reader’s head. So, it’s great that you said He Needs to Be Able to Laugh at Himself, because that probably covers most of it. Thanks for sharing.
Love the way you clarified things such as laugh with not at. A popular theme seems to be they can be a bad boy as long as they’re a good man.
I like your list. Your hero sounds like a great guy.