Show me your hero

When I write a book, the hero’s crucial. In my head, he’s clear from early in the process. I suppose that what I do is create a man I could fall in love with. And it’s amazingly satisfying when someone sends me a message to say that they have fallen in love with one of my heroes,too. (Thank you, everybody who has!)

I’m not even certain how writing a hero works. I mean, just because I fancy someone, it won’t mean you fall for him, too. I might go for a toughie and you for a smoothie. Me for tall and you for cuddly. So how does the alchemy work? How can what’s in my imagination transfer to someone yours, and become a man you’d get gooey over?

It must be that the reader’s imaginary hero is just right for the reader. It doesn’t matter if I say he’s tall, if the reader prefers cuddly, that’s what he becomes. To them. I’ve been through this process myself, as a reader, and been quite surprised to note, part way through the book, that the hero has blond hair – because I’d simply seen him as dark. That’s how I’d pictured him, ergo, that’s how he was!

The writer’s imagination didn’t come into it.

So, how about you? Do you think you share a writer’s vision of a character? Or do you identikit your own?

Who’s your hero? Is he conventionally phwoarrrr! or do you go for someone different to the fancy of all your friends?

Do you like to fall between the covers of a book with an adventurous rogue, but married a boy-next-door accountant?

Do tell me. (I won’t tell anyone else …)