I've heard recently that the more alpha your hero the better for Presents, I've certainly seen this in my reading lately. Do you think this is true?
Okay, so let’s start right at the beginning – and look at what we mean by an Alpha hero. Because one of the problems that I have with some of the writers of Presents – and the would-be writers of Presents seems to hang on that particular point.
The term Alpha comes from the animal kingdom – the Alpha wolf is the leader of the pack. The Boss. He has won his place by strength, courage, fortitude and sheer power. He rules the rest of the pack with the same qualities. He has to, or the pack will not survive – certainly, if the Alpha loses his grip on the rest, someone will rise up against him, defeat him and rule in his place. The other reward of being the Alpha wolf is that he gets the best females – mates with the very best – breeds wonderful cubs. But along with his success and his rewards as Alpha Wolf – he has a lot of responsibilities – he has to protect his own – defend the females and the cubs from invading marauders, make sure he takes them where the hunting is good.
That’s an ALPHA. And the Alpha hero has to have those qualities.
He has to be successful- a man of achievement. Independent. A ruler – a man of power. Strong, handsome, vigorous. A leader. In human societies, the signs of success are wealth and power – and so the Alpha hero has to have the outward trappings – those visible signs of success that the world values – money, houses, cars, businesses . . .
Tradition has grown up that – to quote Jayne Ann Krentz in DANGEROUS MEN AND ADVENTUROUS WOMEN – ‘These males are the tough, hard-edged, tormented heroes that are at the heart of the vast majority of bestselling romance novels . . . They are the heroes who carry off the heroines in historical romances. These are the heroes feminist critics despise.’
For the heroine of a romance, the hero is the main problem that she must deal with – the hero and the conflict between her and him that results from his character. For a romance to have a strong plot it needs to have a strong conflict, and unless the hero and his situation, and some part of his character present such a challenge to the heroine that it creates a strong conflict then it won’t provide much of a plot. The success of the Alpha hero is that he provides a strong challenge for a strong heroine. That is where the sense of risk and challenge and so the sense of danger comes from – and that sense of danger creates the level of excitement and tension that a good romance needs to have. The best romances have a relationship that provides that challenge and so the sense of excitement.
Everyone knows that a romance will always have a happy ending. That is the convention – the natural end of such books, so it is no surprise when it happens. The real skill of a good author is to make it look as if that happy ending might actually never come about – that it might really be strongly at risk, so that even when she is secure in the knowledge that the HEA is going to happen – she is definitely wondering whether, in the end everything will be all right.
But nowhere here have I said that the Alpha hero also need to be a macho brute who treats women badly. Who is angry and aggressive, hostile, arrogant and demanding. Yes an Alpha hero has to be tough, hard-edged and forceful, but underneath it all they have to have a heart of gold and be capable of the deepest all consuming love that their heroines deserve – those heroines who are, after all, the BEST females around – and so suitable Alpha mates for an Alpha Male.
The problem I have with some writers/would be writers of Presents – and it would not be professional to enter into a discussion of names or examples – is that they also seem to think that along with the strong, powerful characteristics of an Alpha male, the term also implies a form of almost brutish behavior, a total disregard for the heroine’s feelings, and an arrogant trampling over those feelings in order to get what he wants. There are those who believe that as long as the hero grovels and apologizes enough at the end he is therefore ‘redeemed’ and so wins the love of the heroine and the approval of the readers – and the right to his happy ever after.
I cannot agree. The Alpha hero is a challenge, and he usually seems to have something of the darkness, of the villainous about him – but he is not a brute. He may be a man who has been turned cynical be experience, he may be someone who had been damaged by being hurt in the past, he may be the sort of man who feels deeply but doesn’t have the emotional vocabulary to reveal that. Circumstances my also be against him. He may have been badly misled, by other people, by circumstances, by the heroine herself, to think wrongly of the heroine’s nature and behavior. But he is not a brute. Not an abuser. Not someone who despises and degrades women in his mind. He may have had women in his past – this is the Alpha who attracts the females after all – but he hasn’t treated them badly and his is not a misogynist. He is passionate, feels strongly, and so often reacts strongly – in anger, in jealousy, in misapprehension he can be cruel for the moment, but he is not in his soul cruel. If he acts in a cruel way you, the author, have to give him very strong reasons for behaving in that way, and show him realizing that such behavior was wrong before he can convince anyone he is in love. This is not the same as groveling/repenting or any such thing.
An Alpha has plenty of pride – and that often gets in the way of him admitting his faults. But he is not mean or petty or bullying. Again, if it looks as if he is bullying it is because he is dodging the real issue – that of saying what he feels. Because an Alpha’s pride means that he won’t risk saying he loves someone when they might laugh in his face.
So where does this leave you as a writer. It means that you need to recognize the difference between an Alpha male and brutish, selfish arrogance masquerading as Alpha nature. An Alpha may have an arrogant, apparently impregnable exterior, but this is usually armor plating. Underneath the armor, he has a heart as big and as powerful as all the rest of him – it’s just that he keeps it safely out of sight. If you look at the description of the Alpha wolf then you’ll see that what an Alpha has at heart is the belief that he can look after this heroine better than any other. The Alpha male is not infallible or invulnerable. You need to write a powerful man with a vulnerable and well-protected heart. If he appears hard, unfeeling, angry, cruel, vengeful . . . you need to provide strong, believable reasons for him being like that.
For me, it all comes down to believing in that Happy Ever After at the end. I can believe in the fact that a strong man who has made mistakes of judgment and emotion along the way – mistakes that may lead him to act wrongly – and then will be able to truly love the woman of his heart for the rest of his life. What I cannot accept is a man who is portrayed as ‘Alpha’ by being someone who has used women, despised women – and who behaves in a way that I would describe as abuse towards the heroine – and is then shown to have a sudden ‘conversion’ into ‘love’ because he realizes the heroine has been innocent all along. I would not believe in that man’s declaration of love and I would not believe that he and his heroine could ever have a Happy Ever After.
