Lucynda Storey-Erotic Romance Writer

It’s not often a romance writer gets mentioned in a hard core tech anything, but romance writers were given a nice boost at the end of July with two articles written about them in Geek Dad, a blog column associated with Wired magazine.

One of the things brought out in the article Firefly Shines Brightly for Writers (Corrina Lawson, July 29, 2009) is how Mal, the captain of the spaceship Serenity is two things.  One he is multi-dimensional.  At times he comes across as a swashbuckler, a gunslinger, a plain spoken simple man who acts like a father toward his sometimes ill-behaved crew.  This in turn earns Mal a strange sort of loyalty, exactly the sort one might have in a well-functioning family. 

He says he’s about looking after his ship and the freedom that is “out there”, but he won’t cotton to anyone messing with his crew and they know it.  His first mate, Zoe, despite being married to Wash, backs her captain all the way.  When River is threatened by Jayne, Mal lays down the law. You might not know if Mal is right in his decision making, but you do know that Mal is certain he’s made the right choice.  He has his own code of honor and ethics and sticks to it.  That adds to his universal appeal and complexity. 

The other: Mal is a broken man.  He’s missing essential emotional components to make him whole.  He is in effect the man heroines of romance novels like to “fix”.  He’s scarred and we love that in our heroes, we love that they suffer and we love that we can create a heroine for our hurting male.

Which begs the question…are your heroes complex with parts missing from their lives that only a heroine can provide?  And what about the opposite?  What is missing from your heroine’s life that her alpha hero provides (other than those brawny muscles and preservation instincts)?

The article goes on to explain another Firefly / Joss Whedon characteristic.  Unique dialogue.  Recently my son picked up a browncoat tee-shirt that states emphatically, “I aim to misbehave.”  Just a slightly different use of the verb ‘aim’ and we have a unique dialogue for Mal.  Each character had a very specific way of speaking.  Even if they all had identical voices (pitch, intonation, cadence) you would have been able to tell them apart by word choice alone.

Joss Whedon’s Firefly is definitely worth viewing, and especially listening too; and it’s a heck of a benchmark to attain.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 7:38 pm and is filed under Lucynda Storey, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.