By Janine Rosch, @janinerosche
“Ryann Ashcroft rolled onto her back, clinched her arms across her stomach, and surrendered her breath into the dreary, gray sky. The newspaper had predicted snowfall for the mid-May evening, and the morose clouds hovering over the Gallatin mountains seemed keen to obey. Soon, if there were any justice under heaven, the grave would swallow her whole.”
Wildflower Road, Janine Rosche
You know what’s tough? Trying to get a contract on a romance that begins with the heroine crying on her dead husband’s grave and hoping to get sucked in. I can’t help it. I love giving my characters sad backstories and then putting them through 300 pages of more hardship before they get their happily ever after.
However, no one wants to read a story about Debbie Downer. If a character is helpless, hopeless, depressed, sorrowful, angry, or hateful one hundred percent of the book, your readers will either get annoyed or exhausted. It isn’t too different from having a friend or family member going through a tough time. Even the most compassionate of us need a break of some sort. If your reader needs a break from your character, they’ll put down the book and may never pick it back up.
That doesn’t mean you need to change all your Debbie Downers into Susie Sunshines. We love characters who have been through it. They give us someone to cheer for, and oftentimes, they are more relatable than perpetually perky characters.
Here are seven tips to make readers fall in love with your miserable characters:
1. Give them a sense of humor. In Wildflower Road, Ryann lost her first husband to suicide, she works at her family’s resort that is at risk of shutting down, and she has a stalker. None of that keeps her from teasing new-to-Montana pastor Shane about pretty much everything.
2. Surround them with a cast of characters that can play off them with joy. Haven Haviland had made BIG mistakes by the time Aspen Crossroad opens and she just so happened to live in a town where gossip followed her everywhere. It was enough to make her a hermit, except her siblings wouldn’t let her. Not only did they encourage her to keep living, but they surrounded her with love and just enough crazy to keep her smiling.
3. Give them a pet. In Glory Falls, Thomas Beck has had a lifetime of hardships and a personality that never, ever shares his feelings to anyone…except his three-legged dog, Molly. She brings out the sweet side and silly side he doesn’t like to show. Even the most broken characters can be reached by a dog, cat, horse, pot-bellied pig, etc.
4. Turn them into helpers. After growing up homeless and losing his mother, Jace Daring is angry and untrusting in Aspen Crossroads, https://www.amazon.com/Aspen-Crossroads-Whisper-Canyon-Romance/dp/0593335759 but the reader knows his heart is huge because he sacrificially works to help victims of sex trafficking.
5. Show them in better times. When I wrote Glory Falls, I knew chapter one would begin with a brooding firefighter riddled with guilt and a Hollywood screenwriter who had just lost her toddler, her career, and her marriage. Oof. Talk about a sad situation. That’s why I chose to include a prologue that featured that hero and heroine playing together as eleven-year-old kids and even sharing their first kiss. It provided the reader with hope that one day, they could get back to those happier days.
6. Give them a quirky hobby. In This Wandering Heart, Keira Knudsen grew up in an abusive home which gave her a quiet, fearful spirit, a profession as a small-town high school geography teacher, and a boring but controlling boyfriend. Of course, she secretly moonlights as a social media adventure-seeker traveling the country as Kat Wanderfull.
7. Get them out of their discomfort zone. Yep, you heard me. Give them a goal or task that forces them to leave their cocoon of misery. As someone who lives with clinical depression, I can speak well to this. Sometimes the easiest thing to do is sit in sadness, bitterness, grief, etc. even though it hurts. By giving your character a challenge, they’ll be forced to face their misery. It won’t be easy, but it will make for an interesting story.
YOUR TURN: What are your suggestions on how to keep a character from becoming all doom and gloom?
To protect those most vulnerable, Haven Haviland must trust her heart–and her regrets–to a mysterious newcomer in this moving contemporary romance.
Few in the community of Whisper Canyon have actually met Jace Daring, a handsome recluse who lives at Aspen Crossroads, the farm at the edge of town. But that doesn’t stop the rumors about the multiple women who live with him. He must protect the truth–that his farm-to-table restaurant will provide new livelihoods for women rescued from human trafficking–or he risks the safety and futures of those relying on him. But he can’t do it alone.
Haven Haviland has always been everyone’s safe place to fall until one mistake closes her counseling practice and leaves her open to the town’s gossip. Trusting men has gotten her in trouble before. However, accepting Jace’s job offer to mentor the rescued women seems like the perfect way to right her wrongs.
When the mayor’s campaign to clean up Whisper Canyon targets Aspen Crossroads, the restaurant comes under fire, dangers from the women’s pasts are awakened, and Haven’s sins are exposed for all to see. Jace would sacrifice himself to save Haven and the women under his care, but his efforts might not be enough. And in the end, it might not be the women most in need of saving after all.
Prone to wander, Janine Rosche finds as much comfort on the open road as she does at home. This longing to chase adventure, behold splendor, and experience redemption is woven into her Madison River Romance series and her upcoming release ASPEN CROSSROADS. When she isn’t writing or traveling, she teaches family life education courses to college students, takes too many pictures of her sleeping dogs, and embarrasses her four children and husband with boy band serenades. Chat with her on Facebook and Instagram or visit www.JanineRosche.com for a free Whisper Canyon Romance prequel novella.