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Stereotypes

Posted by Leslie on April 20th, 2007 | 1 Comment

Romance Readers at Heart had a great post on their blog last week about stereotypes, especially in the historical romance genre. She starts out the post with this list:

The innocent—but feisty—virgin.
The scary old wise woman.
The wisecracking sidekick.
The money-hungry father/mother/brother, etc…
The overbearing, drop dead handsome—but secretly sensitive and deeply wounded—hero.

Many of my own stories, have these in them. SECRET INTENTIONS has the “innocent but fiesty virgin” and the “money-hungry father/mother/brother.” MARK OF THE MONSTER is all about the “overbearing, drop dead handsome-but secretly sensitive and deeply wounded-hero.”

Victorian Era MenIn fact, MONSTER was rejected by one editor strictly on the fact that dark, wounded heroes are the “bread and butter” of the historical romance and she wanted to see something different. Personally, I don’t think she read the whole 100+ pages I sent her, but that’s for another post.

I write what I want to read. And if I want to read it, chances are that others do too. It’s all in the execution. If the author can make a stereotyped character unique then we aren’t reading the same thing over and over. After all, hasn’t it been said that there are no new plots?

Do you have any thoughts on this?

 

“Comments”

Lisa 20/04/07 - 11:10 am

There’s an episode of South Park where Butters goes a bit nuts (short trip) over not being able to come up with anything original — The Simpsons had already done every conceivable plot or motif.

So, now when I start to freak out over whether I have cliches in my writing, my hubby yells out “Simpsons did it!”

I do think it’s impossible to find something absolutely totally original. It matters more what unique twist we bring to the subject matter or character or whatever.

You can see the clip here.

Simpsons did it!

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