Lauren Willig | Driving by Misdirection, or Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

Most things in my life happen when I’m trying to do something else. I don’t even mean the big things, like planning to write a dissertation and coming out with a series of romance novels instead (ought I to get an RD for that? I like the sound of Romanciae Doctor), or the fact that if I meant to go right, I usually walk left (I find all sorts of new and interesting places that way). This happens to me in my writing, too. What I wind up writing is seldom exactly what I intended it to be.

Take my first book for example, the lengthily titled Secret History of the Pink Carnation. I very firmly told my agent that what I had produced was a “traditional Regency romance”. My agent is a very kind, patient sort of person. Instead of making snorting noises, he said, very gently, “Are you sure?” I was quite sure. “Um…” he said, flipping through the mental filofax for Tactful Ways to Deal With Deluded Authors. “Are you really sure?” That’s how I found out that what I’d really written was Napoleonic-era historical fiction/ romantic suspense/ mystery/ chick lit. No one can quite agree on what it is, but it sure ain’t a traditional Regency. In a word, ooops.

This just happened to me again with my most recent book, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine. While I was working on it, I laughingly described it to friends as my Judith McNaught tribute book. I grew up on her brooding heroes with their “pagan kisses” (always the pagan kisses!) who drew heroines “like moths to a dangerous flame”. I love those books. After writing very different sorts of heroes and heroines, I wanted to go back to my McNaught archetypes: the innocent heroine (with large vocabulary) and the cynical, worldly hero.

The Temptation of the Night Jasmine seemed to offer the perfect opportunity for McNaught moment. My heroine, Charlotte, grew up under the shadow of her grandmother, the terrifying Dowager Duchess of Dovedale, the woman who launched a thousand ships—as their crews all rowed for their lives in the opposite direction. To escape her grandmother, Charlotte built her own elaborate fantasy world of romances and fairy tales. She’s simultaneously erudite and naïve, idealistic, bookish, trusting. Even so, she’s somehow not quite McNaught-y, and I can’t quite put my finger on why. My hero completely refused to comply. Oh, he has that noble- background-but-deprived-upbringing McNaught hero thing going, but he lacks the hard and glittering edge. If those heroes were dangerous jungle cats, mine is more of a Great Dane. I love them both, and I love the way they turned out, but they’re not what I originally intended them to be.

This could just be another instance of my talent for misdirection, but I wonder if it’s also a sign of the times. What I want to know is, have the archetypes for heroes and heroines changed beyond recapturing? What are your favorite archetypes and how have they shifted?