Unrealist Male Characters

In a recent video, author Abbie Emmons’ criticized contemporary romance stories for male characters who lack an arc and a significant flaw, so are just flat and generic fantasy guy.

While I don’t think I do flat and generic, I am guilty of making most of the guys as stable catalysts for the female character’s arc, aka dramatizing the “I can fix her” mistake that men often make. However, those guys tend towards neither nice guy nor bad boy but a take-no-shit guy who is symbolic of the female character’s confrontation with reality.

HOWEVER, my favorite male characters that I have written tend to have an arc. Nemesis goes from ruthless vigilante to a man ready to settle down to a normal life in suburbia with Claire. Gideon “The Butcher” Sheridan goes from the grieving widower waging a war of revenge with death as it the goal to a man capable of finding purpose in life come peace. Chad, the meme brought to life, goes from a former player grieving the death of Iris (who he failed to care for in life) to a man capable of caring for a woman and building a life together through his personal growth during a series of failed blind dates.

One of my favorite which remained a short story was about a guy who emotionally abandoned his pregnant girlfriend because he feared the child wasn’t his. He starts as a guy unduly influenced by others, his father and his girlfriend. He committed to rebuilding their relationship to be the boyfriend she expected him to be. However, his father threatened to cut him off financially if there was no paternity test on the baby. She wanted that cash so agreed to the test, which proved that he wasn’t the father. This left him with a girlfriend who was not only a proven cheater but also pregnant with another man’s child. Instead of doing what either his girlfriend or his father wanted, the guy chose a course that he wanted as he had fallen in love with his girlfriend again throughout this process. The guy gave the pregnant girlfriend a choice, either breakup, or she would give up the baby for adoption and they would marry.