Treatment Tuesday - Alpha Male on the Couch

Today's assessment puts Elona's character Sam* on the couch. She's writing a historical set in the 1500s on the wild western Irish islands. Sam's family, the MacNamaras, have been fighting over Eagle Island for generations with the heroine's family. At 19, Sam was seduced by his stepmother, his father's third wife. His father caught them en flagrante and shot an arrow into his wife. Sam picked her up, carried her through the night, and buried her, having been sent into exile by his father, who up until then has truly been proud of his son, teaching him how to fight, hunt, and ride. Sam is an alpha male and changes women like he changes tunics.

Elona wants to know: What would be the long-term effect of a young man (19) who had an affair with his stepmother who was then found out, disowned and sent into exile by his father?   What would this character’s attitude toward women be?

After getting more background from you on the traumatic way in which the affair happened, what with his stepmother being killed in front of him and him having to bury her, I'd say that the immediate reaction would be anger toward his father, but that might depend on whether he loved his stepmother or if he was just having a fling like she sounds like she was.

You've already mentioned that he's an alpha male, and this he no doubt learned from his father. The question to ask is why. So romance novels (in the non-Christian arena) generally have an alpha male lead, but you still have to have a reason for this. The father's reason might be simple: he truly loved his first wife, and when she died early in their marriage, he didn't want to risk losing his heart again to a woman who would abandon him.

But what about Sam? What I'm about to suggest for motivations and attitudes is totally just that: suggestions. It's up to you. You could have him really love his stepmother. Like romantically. Perhaps it was his first sexual encounter....the kind that stays with you forever...and he never fully got over her death. And as a result, he buries the part of himself that could ever truly connect with a woman again, and becomes a womanizer (or Don Juan or whatever men were called back in the 1500s).

But maybe his father's anger and violence awakens something in him....a part of him that actually hates his stepmother for what she did. She obviously took advantage of a younger man, and it cost her her life. Maybe Sam could think that she got what she deserved. Thoughts of her infidelity might could be what really affects him in the long-term....and he might come away from the whole traumatic idea with the internal schema that women are never to be trusted.

Or, just to throw it out there, you could have him as the quintessential angry alpha male. His pride was burned when his father exiled him at such a young age for something he felt wasn't his fault. He blames it on the dead stepmother, and somehow this anger transfers to other women. You could still go with the fact that he doesn't deem women trustworthy as the basis for his anger, but he uses and discards them the way he felt his stepmother did to him, and his womanizing ways are really a grand scheme to feel justified and get back at his stepmother and his father.

The exile from his father could also come into play (and should if you ever plan on reuniting them in anyway). Maybe he seeks to dominate women in order to align himself with his father in hopes to make him more appealing as a son and therefore worthy for the father to take back into his fold. This almost sounds too far-fetched, but motivations can be outlandish. It's how you write them that matters. I could totally see a grief-stricken lad of 19 believing this could be true.

So I guess I'd try to solidify a few things before going ahead with this novel:

1) How grief-stricken is he over the exile and/or death of stepmother?
2) What need is he meeting by being a womanizer? (I did an article for Christian Fiction Online Magazine about playboys here.)

Alrighty, then. Guess that sums it up. Hope it's been helpful. Thanks for writing in and thank you for your kind words. :-)

Character Stereotypes: The Playboy

Christian fiction has its fair share of heroes who dabble in playing the ladies. Of course, the nature of Christian fiction doesn’t lend itself to measuring sexual prowess by notches on bedposts, yet some of the more edgy novels flirt with this truth, or at least skirt around it.


Casanovas, Lotharios, Romeos, libertines, rakes, rogues, lady-killers, and ladies’ men find a place in all genres and time periods. Expounding on the available research will help you break away from the stereotype and create a more believable, and even likeable, character.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

And for a chance to win Ashley Weis' Exposed, click here!

Treatment Tuesday - From Playboy to Committed Husband

This week’s assessment is from Alice, who gave me a possible scenario to weigh in on. Alice is writing a contemporary category romance about a man who is determined to never be in a position where someone relies on him emotionally because when he was a teen, his brother was in a serious accident and the hero and his family blamed him for it. So the hero goes for casual flings and a playboy lifestyle in an attempt to distract himself from the guilt he feels. Years later, the brother dies, which compounds the hero’s guilt.

What if, around the time of the brother’s death, the hero gets really reckless and has a one-night stand that results in pregnancy? Could it be feasible for him to feel he could atone for his brother’s death by marrying the woman for the sake of the child in a marriage of convenience? In other words, “he’s been responsible for the loss of one life and he’s not going to destroy another.”

Alice then wants to know the following: What could happen to change his stance on not allowing himself to enter into a loving relationship with the woman and his unborn son? What emotional stages would he need to go through to get to a place where he gradually changes and ends up as a committed, caring husband? How could the heroine aid the change?

Alice, I say it’s more than feasible. GO FOR IT. People are always looking for ways to atone for their sins. To the observer, maybe some of the ways they choose have no outward correlation, but as long as you give him sufficient internal motivation, and let the reader know that this man firmly believes he can atone for his brother by making sure his son is taken care of, then it’ll pass with flying colors.

Even more so would be if you up the stakes for the hero by giving him a backstory full of angst with his own father. Maybe his father only tolerated him, or didn’t show him any affection, or was always blaming him for things. Maybe he was adopted, and all he was told about his biological parents were that they didn’t want him or couldn’t take care of him. Then, when he sees that he has the means to take care of his son, he feels he can somehow even atone for his own biological parents’ downfall.

You could really play with his backstory quite a bit to make for even more tension-filled reading. If his bio dad was a player and left his pregnant teenage girlfriend who then later gave up the hero for adoption, that would add a different dimension to the hero’s decision to enter into a marriage of convenience than would the scenario where he enters into the marriage simply to prove to himself that he can do right by his son…or that he can be a better father than his own, who never told him he loved him or was proud of him.

One thing to remember about parenting is that you learn from modeling. Typically, you either grow up to be the exact same kind of parent as your own parent (scary thought, huh?) or you do a complete 180 degrees and do the exact opposite as your parent because you remember how it felt. So think about that dynamic as you make the hero a future dad. What was his own father like? Why or why not would he want to behave similarly or the exact opposite?

Going on the assumption, then, that he feels sufficiently compelled to enter into a relationship with this woman, you’d need to make his change of heart believable…so he’s not just going through the motions of marriage…he really wants a marriage in all sense of the word.

For some potential plot points, I’d consider allowing him to come through for this woman during a critical time in her pregnancy. At a time when she really needs him, he’s there for her and she makes it clear she wouldn’t have made it without him. Or perhaps he even saves the baby somehow by rushing her to the hospital to get attention for a symptom she didn’t consider all that unusual, but if he hadn’t made her get a check-up, the baby could have been in danger. Something like that would really give you a great opportunity for the heroine to encourage and compliment this man on his care and support of her…something he’d feel surprised about, because he considers himself unworthy of it. But praise is powerful…especially from a beautiful woman who happens to be carrying your child. :)

If they marry before the baby is born, then I think having her do little things to take care of him would really go a long way. Especially if his childhood was more “every man for himself,” then when this woman, whose belly is growing because of his own recklessness (well, that’s a mutual recklessness…but you get the idea), begins to pick up his socks or do his laundry or have him supper when he gets home…I think that would be something his solitary soul would really crave deep down. Of course, you’ll have to have this almost insurmountable obstacle at the end of the book where it looks like it won’t work out, and you could have him in the house, missing her feminine touch. The socks are piling up, that sort of thing. This isn’t as dramatic a change of heart so much as a gradual one that he suddenly realizes…one in which the heroine might not even realize what a role she played.

People are relational. God created us that way. He created Eve for Adam and said it was GOOD. He doesn’t intend for people to be isolated. Now, not everyone is made to marry, but they are made to have friends, to have relationships. So you’ve given your hero a great “flaw” of selfishness and self-sufficiency. He doesn’t want others to rely on him, but deep down, he really doesn’t want to rely

on others, either. Why? Because somewhere in his past, someone has failed him. So he masks his own hurt and insecurity internally by saying he’s not trustworthy or reliable.

This is a defense mechanism called reaction formation. (Read more about it here.) He behaves in such a way (playboy lifestyle) that is the exact opposite of what he really wants (love and security). The beauty of reaction formation is that it’s only an effective coping style for the short term…it eventually will break down and this will feed your character arc perfectly.

Hope this has been helpful. As always, any questions are welcome in the comments section and I’ll do my best to answer them.

This service is for fictional characters only, so any resemblance to real life examples is entirely coincidental. Any other fictional character assessment questions can be directed to charactertherapist@hotmail.com.

Treatment Tuesday - What Makes a Womanizer Tick?

This week’s Assessment comes courtesy of Betty. She wrote in with essentially one question that she wanted answered for the current novel she’s working on. She asked:

What makes a womanizer tick? (and in Betty’s book, this doesn’t equate with sleeping around…just serial dating, inability to commit, that sort of thing).

Don’t we all wish we knew the answer to this question! The reality is that there is no psychiatric formula to point to which results in womanizing. There are, however, some generalities you can make, which I will write about before getting more into the specifics of Betty’s character sketch.

According to Jed Diamond, author of The Irritable Male, serial seducers generally come from a home with an absent father. Turning to women for validation can be a way to compensate for a lack of connection to their father. Neil Strauss, who authored The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pick-Up Artists, said that of most of the players he met, many of them were “late bloomers.” High school wasn’t exactly a time of success with the opposite sex. But college often changes the equation for these men and they take off at a full run.

Based on Betty’s character sketch, I’m not sure either of these suggestions would work for her manuscript, but it’s something to think about for other authors.

With true womanizers (who try to get women in bed), as well as your tamer Christian fiction counterpart, low self-esteem is an important part of why they do what they do. There is a certain amount of attention and power and control that being a womanizer brings a man, and these emotions would come into play regardless of what happens after the dates are over.

Your hero needs to feed off these women (no, not like Edward in Twilight ☺). The question you need to ask yourself is this: What need of his are these women meeting? This is what a therapist would try to figure out in session. Is it to give him an ego stroke? That could be two-fold, giving him an internal stroke—i.e., “It might not have worked out with so-and-so who left me or so-and-so who died, but I could get with this girl if I wanted” type thing—as well as an external stroke—i.e., “when I walk in with her on my arm, every male is going to turn around and stare, this upping me in their estimation.”

It might be your hero is in need of a power trip. Incorporate his career into why he might be with so many women. Does he want a different one on his arm at each corporate function? Does that give him a feeling of control in a world that feels out of control? He’s GOT to have a motivation for seeking these women out, for putting himself in situations to meet women. The book will fall flat if that’s not in there.

There is some general information regarding womanizers. But to get more specific to Betty’s hero, here’s a bit more to factor in: His fiancé died from ovarian cancer. He’s mad at the doctors for not helping her and mad at God for not healing her, either. His grief is stuck in the anger stage. He was into heavy drinking, but Betty wonders how she could take out the alcohol issue and still have the womanizing.

I really think Betty’s solution lies in her dilemma for this character. I emailed her earlier and suggested that instead of having the fiancé die, have her spurn him instead. A tremendous pain from a romantic interest could definitely turn a man toward womanizing, like a love lost or a love unreturned (think Ryan Reynolds in the movie Just Friends). If you don’t want the fiancé to do this, however, I think it would be equally as awful for him to have been spurned earlier in his life before meeting his fiancé, who then dies, leaving him feeling hopeless things will ever work out for him in the love department. It would be very realistic to have him then turn to the “revolving door of women” you mentioned in your email (which I liked, by the way).

To really make your hero believable, my advice is to work in some backstory about him being a late bloomer (not nearly as attractive as he’s portrayed now) and really give him solid motivations for being with these women so it doesn’t read contrived. Just answer the question: What needs of his are being met? And then, by the end of the book (or by the end of my therapy sessions with someone like this), I would hope he's meeting those needs in a healthier way to give him a nice, round character arc.

Thanks for writing in. Feel free to email me with any questions this assessment might dredge up. ☺

This service is for fictional characters only, so any resemblance to real life examples is entirely coincidental. Any other fictional character assessment questions can be directed to charactertherapist@hotmail.com.