Ingredients Of A Perfect Hero, part three: Protector

We've covered the first two ingredients of a perfect hero, compassion and being a warrior. This time we're covering the last one, the hero as a protector. I tried to find a picture, but struck out. Nothing captured what I was going for.

Webster's defines protector as "one who protects." That's helpful, but let's take it a step further and look at protect. "To keep (someone or something) from being harmed, lost, etc." This is better and gives us something to work with.

Since we're dealing with romance heroes it's usually a someone he wants to protect. The heroine, others he cares about, and to a lesser extent himself.

Protect is NOT a synonym for smother. Nor is it a synonym for controlling asshole who won't let the heroine stand on her own or face anything. A protector hero is one willing to put himself between the heroine and harm's way, to take an injury meant for her, to have her back, and to be there to help her if/when she needs it.

I read Transcendence by Shay Savage over the weekend, and it was one of the best examples I've ever seen of a protector hero. The hero, Ehd, is a cave man. With no ability to process speech. It was amazing and one of the best books I've ever read. All he knows is hunting and protecting what's his. He loves his heroine. He learns from her. She also literally saves his life.

Ehd's first thought every morning when he wakes up is to protect his Beh. In the pre-historic world, if you had no one to protect you, you didn't live very long. He protects her from wild animals, from winter, and from another man who tries to rape her. He even tries to protect her while their baby daughter is dying, by holding her and not leaving her to deal with it alone. And he does it all without diminishing her strength.

It's a beautiful novel. Go buy it. Ehd is everything a romance hero should be. It's also a novel told 100% in the hero's perspective, until the epilogue.

In my novel, My Name Is A'yen, A'yen is a protector. His species has been genetically manipulated for centuries to produce certain physical characteristics such as increased strength and height. The males of his species already have strong protective instincts and many of them are conditioned to make those instincts even stronger. Fae, the heroine, buys A'yen for the express purpose of protecting her while she heads up an archaeological dig on an alien planet.

He doesn't protect her by hovering or smothering or forcing her to do things his way. He does it with patience and compassion. By putting himself between her and perceived physical danger. He even does it by sacrificing his own needs to ensure her reputation isn't ruined.

When you combine compassion, a warrior outlook, and the heart of a protector, you have a recipe for romance hero magic. These are the qualities that make us swoon over a hero and give him the honor of book boyfriend.

Rachel Leigh Smith writes romance for the hero lover. She lives in central Louisiana with her family and a half-crazed calico. When not writing, which isn’t often, she’s hanging with her family, doing counted cross-stitch, or yakking about life, the universe, and everything with her besties. Her debut novel, My Name Is A'yen, is available at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Google Play, iBooks, and Smashwords.

She blogs sporadically at www.rachelleighsmith.com, can be found on Twitter @rachelleighgeek, and hangs out on Facebook. You can sign up for her newsletter here.

Ingredients Of A Perfect Hero, part two: The Warrior

Last month I covered compassion as the first ingredient of a perfect hero. This time I'm looking at what it means to be a warrior hero. The warrior/protector archetype is the one I'm most drawn to as a reader, and as an author. It's also the archetype my dad fulfills in my own life. Which tells you everything you need to know about why it's my favorite. I'm a daddy's girl.

Image courtesy of maniaroom
via FreeDigitalPhotos.net

For many people the word warrior brings up images of knights and soldiers and cops and firefighters. And for good reason. Merriam-Webster defines warrior as this: a person who fights in battles and is known for having courage and skill.

The expanded definition includes this: a man engaged or experienced in warfare; broadly: a person engaged in some struggle or conflict.

Our final definition is for the archetype of Warrior, via Tami Cowden. "The WARRIOR: a noble champion, he acts with honor. This man is the reluctant rescuer or the knight in shining armor. He's noble, tenacious, relentless, and he always sticks up for the underdog. If you need a protector, he’s your guy. He doesn’t buckle under to rules, and he doesn’t go along just to get along. Think Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry, Russell Crowe in Gladiator, Mel Gibson in Braveheart.

(I highly recommend her pages about Heroine Archetypes and Hero Archetypes. When I started fitting characters into these categories a whole new world of plotting and conflict opened up for me.)

Now that you know where I'm going, off we go!

To have a hero fit this archetype he does NOT have to be in the military, or be a cop, or an enforcement agent of any kind. He is a man engaged in some kind of struggle or conflict. What is good fiction? Conflict. To be a warrior, the hero faces this conflict head-on. He doesn't hide from it or try to wish it away. He wades into the fray, digs in, and fights with everything he is and every skill he has. Because he knows no other way. He couldn't live with himself if he gave up.

This is a man who isn't afraid to face outward struggles. That doesn't mean he never knows fear, it means he knows how to not let it paralyze him. It means he's capable of making sacrifices, and is willing to make them. A warrior also fights for the underdog and those less well off than him, no matter the circumstance.

A good warrior does it with compassion, as we talked about last month.

Even warriors have flaws, though, and flaws make us love characters. A warrior hero may be unafraid of facing external conflict, but facing the internal conflict brought up by the heroine can scare the pants off him. When he acknowledges this fear, and uses his warrior skills and mindset to face it anyway, we love him all the more.

One important thing to remember. Archetypes are NOT defined by their actions. They're defined by their motivations. For the warrior, his motivation is often linked to protecting those he loves, protecting what he considers his, or trying to right some injustice done to him or someone he loves. And this is just what I came up with typing. If I sat and really thought about it and dug deep I could make a pretty big list.

In my novel My Name Is A'yen, A'yen is a warrior. Often a reluctant warrior, but still a warrior. He fights the injustice of slavery at every opportunity, usually with words because he's a smart-ass who has trouble keeping his mouth shut. To him actions are intimate things and never to be displayed in public.

Fighting for the person he loves is a new concept for him. He loved someone before he met Fae, and that person acted as a warrior-protector of him. A'yen knows what it looks like to sacrifice and be fought for. It slowly dawns on him no one has ever done it for Fae. When his internal desire to be free collides with his external desire to keep Fae safe so she can prove she's found his species' home-world, he meets the challenge and becomes a sacrificial warrior. 

What is he sacrificing? His personal freedom, because if Fae is destroyed his personal freedom remains unattainable. His motivations are complimentary, but at the same time at odds with each other. He wants to be seen as more than a slave, yet making this sacrifice leaves him as nothing more than a slave. This tension in his goals and motivation is part of what has reviewers raving about the novel. It makes him real and three-dimensional.

It's stepping up and facing the challenge head-on, instead of backing down or finding another way, that shows A'yen is a warrior. It's not enough for me to tell the reader he's a warrior. He has to have the actions to prove it.

Question for you: Who's your favorite warrior archetype hero? He can be from any medium.

Next month we'll look at the hero as a protector.

Rachel Leigh Smith writes romance for the hero lover. She lives in central Louisiana with her family and a half-crazed calico. When not writing, which isn’t often, she’s hanging with her family, doing counted cross-stitch, or yakking about life, the universe, and everything with her besties. Her debut novel, My Name Is A'yen, is available at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Google Play, iBooks, and Smashwords.

She blogs sporadically atwww.rachelleighsmith.com, can be found on Twitter @rachelleighgeek, and hangs out on Facebook. You can sign up for her newsletter here.

Ingredients Of A Perfect Hero, part one: Compassion

My first post here on the Brigade blog was about my idea of a perfect hero. I included a list of what I have to have in a hero. Here it is.

My perfect hero is a man of compassion. A man who never gives up, no matter how much life beats him down. He's a warrior with a strong sense of justice and loyalty. He's a protector of those weaker than him, male or female, animal or alien. Most importantly he's not afraid to lay down his life for the one he loves. And he's not afraid for her to know it.

Today is the first in a three part series where I'm going to expand on this paragraph. After all, I write romance for the hero-lover. I love nothing more than a hero-centric romance. The second part will be about warrior qualities and post on October 14th. The third part will cover the hero as protector, and post on November 11th.

What is compassion? Let's ask Merriam-Webster.

Compassion: sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it

That's a big definition. One could call it high concept. We're going to look at it from a romance perspective. What does it mean to have a compassionate hero? The easy answer is he helps people. But the easy answer doesn't help a writer imbue a hero with compassion. A compassionate hero helps people, yes, but there's more to it.

Compassion is a mindset, a way of looking at the world and truly seeing the people around you as people with problems, people who are hurting in some way. It may not be visible, but that doesn't mean the hurts aren't there. In writing we call these things character wounds. A compassionate hero is aware his heroine is hurt in some way, and he doesn't stop at wanting to help. He actually helps.

It's all the more meaningful an act when it requires the hero to step outside of his own pain to help the woman he's falling in love with. This is what I did in my debut novel, My Name Is A'yen. A'yen is a man trapped in his grief and having a very hard time dealing with it enough to let it go. It's not until he sees her pain that he realizes he's not the only hurting person. Her pain is different from his, but no less real.

A compassionate hero is also a sacrificial hero. He's willing to do whatever he must to alleviate the suffering of the one he loves, to the point of sacrificing what he most wants. This includes being willing to sacrifice his future, his dreams, and even his life.

In real life, people who step outside their pain to help other hurting people are the ones who actually recover from their hurts. The same is true in fiction. When a hero steps outside his pain, focuses on the heroine, and helps her deal with whatever has hurt her--physically or emotionally--it begins his own healing process. When A'yen helps Fae, by being willing to sacrifice one of the things he holds most dear, it enables him to heal, and it enables Fae to heal. Does it hurt him to do it? Absolutely. But he does it anyway, because compassion is so much a part of him he can't imagine not helping her.

It's also true in reverse. Compassion is a key ingredient for a perfect heroine. But compassion in a heroine doesn't make us swoon. When it comes from the hero, which is a place many readers don't expect it to come from, or have never experienced in their personal lives, it makes the hero memorable. And that's what we're all after, isn't it? A memorable book, with characters who never quite leave our readers alone.

For the last few years, with the rise of paranormal romance, the alpha male is EVERYWHERE. I'm not a big fan of the paranormal alpha male, to be honest. Recently, this alpha male has taken what I consider to be a bad turn, and become a bully who doesn't care about anything except his own satisfaction. That type of man is a not a hero, and it's a good way to make me wall-bang a book and never read that author again. Why? He has no compassion.

Don't be that author! A man of compassion is a key ingredient to keep readers coming back for more. It's why Dark-Hunter fans love Acheron so much. It's why Mel Gibson in The Patriot resonates with so many people, me included. It's why Captain America is so popular. It's part of why we love Groot.

Compassion is also an attitude. It doesn't mean the hero has no backbone, or is a sucker for lost causes. It means he cares about the people around him. And honestly? There's nothing more attractive to me than a man who cares and makes the effort to show it.

Rachel Leigh Smith writes romance for the hero lover. She lives in central Louisiana with her family and a half-crazed calico. When not writing, which isn’t often, she’s hanging with her family, doing counted cross-stitch, or yakking about life, the universe, and everything with her besties. Her debut novel, My Name Is A'yen, releases September 12th.

She blogs sporadically at www.rachelleighsmith.com, can be found on Twitter @rachelleighgeek, and hangs out on Facebook. You can sign up for her newsletter here.