Edith here!
I recently ran a contest on my website, asking readers: “If I had the good fortune to have my latest book, "HIS DARK AND DANGEROUS WAYS,” made into a movie,who would you cast as the hero?”
The winner was to be chosen at random and I said so upfront so no one had to be inspired in their choices. Nonetheless, I was staggered at some of them.
Many were actors who had done Historical drama on TV or in the flix. I expected Colin Firth and Hugh Jackman, of course. But some readers also named actors I’d never heard of; had heard of but had never seen, and some that I had seen and vowed I never would again. And this after all the work I do on defining my characters, describing them down to their big toes and shading in all other salient parts. I know there’s no accounting for taste. But still: an elegant Regency era English nobleman played by:
“The Rock”?
Clint Eastwood?
Jack Black????
And lots of surprising others. Why did so many see my hero so differently?
We all know people who are paired in real life with partners we can’t ‘see.’
Loved him, hated her. Loved her – ohmygosh! Why did she marry him?
Sexual attraction and the business of picking a mate has little to do with what the eye sees. It’s chemistry. I can tell a reader what a fella looks like, acts like, even smells like, but I don’t know what her biochemistry is like and what she’ll react to.
Haven’t we all met people who weren’t the bittiest bit attractive, and yet the more we talked with them, the more attracted we became?
It’s chemicals. Pherenomes. The sound of a voice, the sense of a touch. That ineffable something. A million years ago when I was young and single, I met a seemingly perfect man. But up close, he always smelled like shoe polish! Goodbye, man of my dreams.
Money always smells great. In fact, it is the only aphrodesiac I know of that actually works for a huge number of people, male and female.
But our True Romantic Hero smells, tastes, sounds and looks like the man of our dreams.
How can we put that into a book? Writers try. But there's no one dream for everyone. Physical attracton is due to individual sensory perceptions. Love for a movie or TV star or a character in a book is a love of the mind. Imagination fills in the gaps.
Actual attraction for a living breathing human is for living, breathing humans.
All I can do as a writer is to get a character’s mind and soul so well that I feel I know him and hope a reader will too. And if she wants to see him as I never did, that's fine. As long as she loves him too.
Dream on then, dear readers. I don’t fault any of your choices. I’ll do my best to make you see my hero as I do, but one woman’s hero is not another’s.
There is no’ one size fits all’ in Heroland.
Except for Johnny Depp, of course. And Viggo Mortensen. And Alan Rickman and Hugh Laurie and…..Ahem.
Have you ever met a dream man in person and found there was some teensy thing about him that turned you utterly off?
Do tell, she said, with a wicked grin.