Tips on how to create a strong romantic male lead?

Yawn.
Now, that response is based solely on the description of the character. Knowing nothing of the story or what the character actually does leaves me with some hope there is a reason to read your book. An underdog who winds up winning is also a good story. Something interesting has to take place to make a more vanilla character worth caring about.

There are lots of "good men" out there. Their wives still cheat on them. And yes, the opposite is also true--a good wife and mother can also lose her man. When good = boring, good people get tempted to do bad things.

As to be expected in a room full of female respondents, I'm not going to win anyone over to my opinions even though they are founded on something more than casual observation. That's okay.

I do think that on the topic the answer (to repeat) is to create a character that YOU would find attractive and enticing. What I tried to do was point out characteristics that you may choose to examine or utilize. Not every single one of those categories need be in any one character.

 

I have yet to see any evidence of this assertion.

Edited to add:

Nor any detail on what your expertise is based on. Peer-reviewed studies are still welcome.

It is interesting that you seem to assume that a refusal to accept statements of fact without supporting evidence is a purely feminine characteristic. If I were a man, I'd be pretty insulted.

 

lollercoaster

okay, you want to play? let's play.

the reason PUA tactics work at all is because we--not just women, but everybody--have been fed a steady diet of abusive, manipulative bull$#!t and told it's romance our entire lives. that's why Twilight and 50 Shades are such huge hits, and why so many women think the abusive, manipulative male leads are "romantic." women making their own choices for their own reasons are universally degraded as "pushy," "picky," "bitches," et cetera ad nauseum, while men doing utterly vile things with the sole purpose of getting their own d!ck wet, or caving in to their own cowardice and becoming violently possessive and jealous well past the point of sanity, are lauded as sexy, virile heroes. when women manage to dig their way out of the bottomless pit of crap that we've had shoved down our throats by romcoms, sitcoms, and romance novels, their decisions not to allow themselves to be abused are treated as statistical deviations, because it's so much easier to believe science is on your side when you can use cheap manipulations to get laid, isn't it?

every single tactic I've ever heard espoused by PUAs that "works" does so because women have been trained to think of abuse as romance. and now, you know. and now that you know, I really hope you have the courage to examine those tactics critically, and take advantage of the opportunity to educate yourself thoroughly about mental and emotional abuse, and then the next time you see some other clueless fool espousing that garbage, you can step up to him and say "hey, actually, that's not cool."

 

Women don't attach 'unnecessary baggage' women are biologically programmed to be picky, to look for the best man in her given group. So a middle class woman from London in 2014 will be discriminating on the basis of current standards, like good character, chemistry, ability, wealth. However, if you think about it, the woman living in 1915 Cuba will be looking for exact same thing, only terms like 'wealth' will mean a herd of goats rather than a stable job with a good pay.

What I find men can't deal with is that there is no 'trick'. Those Pick Up Artists 'skills' focus on getting a woman to sleep with them, which is a much smaller feat than winning her heart. And then, not a very discerning woman, because women have innate sense for BS and desperation and these PUA tend to reek of both, from a mile away. Men sometimes feel entitled to women's positive response and fail to appreciate that they need to compete with men around them successfully, in order to convince a woman to choose them, not focusing on tricking her somehow to choose them over a much better potential mate. Women aren't stupid to fall for things like that, and PUA types are a subject of ridicule more than anything.

 

Why not? Writers create characters they personally find interesting all the time without caring whether or not this person will be popular. And when they do that, often other people find them interesting too, because they are interesting rather than being a cardboard cutout of Justin Bieber...or whoever the most popular kid on facebook is these days.

Not that challenging stereotypes is necessarily the point of all fiction. But often it does because here comes a character that we wouldn't necessarily identify with and yet we love them. Tyrion Lannister is the most popular character in GoT's even though Jon Snow is better looking and more characteristically a bit of tottie. But to be honest when I watched a season of the TV series Kit Harrington came across as a bit of a manchild and a whiney bitch. Instant turn off. That's coming from someone who likes pretty men. I'd do his wylding girlfiend before I did him.

I'd go so far as to say that the biggest fan base for James Bond type characters is men, out of misguided hero worship. I think you'd be surprised how many women see Tyrion Lannister in a romantic light and other seemingly innocuous male characters. Anime has a huge fan base amoung women and it's full of wimpy men in fashionable haircuts. I've had more than one 5ft nothing boyfriend with anime hair. They were the most fun.

 

The evidence that Nice Guys can become boring to spouses over time is out there if you look for it. I went looking...things in my marriage weren't what I felt they should have been. Without getting into personal details, I found a lot of men (and women, surprisingly) living the same 'married to a roommate' life that I was lamenting. Guys who worked hard, treated their wives kindly, deferred to them for decisions, assumed additional household tasks all in an attempt to 'get her to like me again'.

Doesn't work.

Once these guys returned to acting like actual men instead of brow-beaten male children, remarkable changes took place. I've read about how dopamine and testosterone affect how we think and how things like responsive desire can be created. Yes, it's kind of sad to replace 'romance' with science, but when you're working at saving a marriage you'll consider things that even on the surface may seem ludicrous. I assure you they are not from personal experience. I don't need a 'peer reviewed' study to see what works in my own home. Lest you think I'm some neanderthal that keeps my spouse barefoot and pregnant, I can only tell you my Mrs would laugh at the notion.

Here's the important part I think a lot of you are missing: attraction to a male is not made up solely of 'alpha' traits such as the ones I pointed out above. Those are factors, yes. But if the male (protagonist) does not also bring a level of 'beta' behavior to a relationship then a female will not be satisfied. All alpha = asshole. All beta = cuckold. A healthy mix of both is necessary for both attraction AND long term success. PUA's don't care about the long term...and I'm happy to criticize them as shallow for it. What PUA's have figured out is how to use these things to score women. They use it for sport; a committed individual can still apply some of the same tactics to a relationship to bring aspects of what it may be lacking. Everything in moderation.

 

'Tactics' and 'relationship' in the same sentence. Tells me more than I ever wanted to know in all the wrong ways. Also reminds me why I'm happily single with no desire to change that situation permanently.

 

So what you're saying is that women should ignore what we've learned from our own life experience and defer to your life experience, because...

Because...

Hmm.

And as women, we should ignore what we think that we think and feel and want and defer to what you, as a man, tell us that we think and feel and want, because...

Yeah, that's even harder to answer.

 

I would be very interested to know what individual women think of Tyrion. He is one of the best examples of guile I have ever seen, considering all the ways he cleverly makes the most of his shit lot in life. (And he is my favorite character -- like, he is the main reason I watch Game of Thrones and consider it my favorite TV show, which could easily be called "The Tyrion Lannister Show" -- so there is that...)

 

Maybe your marriage wasn't going so well because of the delusions you have about women.

Relationships fizzle out. Between LOADS of people. This is not because a man is too nice, it just happens. Changing your personality in order to please someone who supposedly loves you unconditionally is just plain pathetic and a terrible idea.

I agree with you on the last part though. We all (men AND women) have masculine and feminine sides. We're not so different. This is where the PUA thing gets ridiculous. We're no more machines with reliable buttons than men are.

 

Then let me re-phrase that to- don't shy away from flaws in your character, embrace them. Whether you put them there deliberately or let them evolve over time, they are important in creating a well rounded person.

Different writers create their characters in different ways, it all depends on the writer and their personal preference. However, the basic principle remains the same. The more perfect the character, the more boring/irritating it is to be around them.

 

The evidence? Where? Which evidence? There is no real evidence to substantiate this. However, as a woman, I'm familiar with type of men who say these things, usually in the same breath as they slag off women for not wanting them. I'm not buying it.

Aha, so you are just talking about yourself and some other guys you met, not actually researched statements or any kind of evidence. That makes a lot more sense to me now.

Of course it doesn't. Women can sense when a man is being insincere or doing something just to get something in return. Especially if there are relationship,problems already. Plus, you can't 'get her to like you again' with such immature tactics as bribery and feigning interest. You can, however, attempt to have a series of open and honest conversations and attempt to woo her again, after whatever happened to make your relationship fizzle out.

Can you please describe to us what 'actual men' act like, please, without misogynist stereotypes. I do agree however that above method of bribing a wife to 'like them again' is immature.

I don't know what you read, but it sounds like a pseudoscience used by people in PUA programmes to convince the gullible members that behaving like a predatory creep actually gets you 'romance'. I happen to know a fair bit about neuroscience as well as behavioural psychology and I can tell you straight away that there is no unequivocal evidence about what makes somebody fall in love with somebody else. There are loads of factors, and in different situations different ones play a part. Everything else is self-delusion and a bunch of desperate men are quite prone to deluding themselves, especially when they try to plot 'how to get a woman'. They might get lucky for a night or two, but love? Relationship? Long-term companionship? I don't think so. They'd be better paying a therapist to figure out what went wrong and to make sure that next time they meet someone they care about, they don't make the same mistakes as before.

Here's the thing - nobody is asking you for peer review journals when you talk about yourself personally,. But when you start using sweeping generalisations with borderline misogynist flavour in the same sentence as 'science' and 'evidence' then you better provide some facts rather than just amusing rhetoric.

We aren't dogs, 'alpha male' is the expression for a dominant male in a group in relation to other males, but human interaction is complex and can not be reduced to these simplistic terms. 'Alphas' aren't 'all assholes', another sweeping generalisation. Assholes are assholes, and in my personal experience, the passive-aggressive, sweet-talking men who lack confidence but abound in sense of entitlement, are the biggest assholes. And creeps. They aren't sincere, they pretend, thinking they can hide their true face, which shines through anyway, and they get shirty and aggressive when they don't get the response they were looking for. These are the guys majority of women are biologically programmed to avoid and incidentally, a few of them resort to PUA techniques rather than working on their own ineptness and insecurities.

Even though I agree that a multifaceted character is easier to get on with than someone who is rigid and set in their role (or ways), I had to chuckle here. I came a cross a few PUAs in my dating years, as you can imagine clubs and bars are not devoid of such individuals, and my friends and I used to have hysterics when one of them would approach us with his 'tactics'. I have, however, heard a lot of statements (never supported with evidence) on how 'incredibly successful they are'. I guess I'd like to see some actual evidence of that too.

 

Well, I do have a plot. It's not Nice Guy asks girl out. She says yes.

 

@jazzabel
@ddavidv

PUA is not about manipulating women anymore than the _insert random name_ workout routine is about performing those specific exercises in a specific sequence.

The soul of PUA, whether the users recognize it or not, is really about men gaining back their natural masculinity that was expressed in early boyhood, and then rooted out in elementary school ,onward.

"Sit still. Pay attention. Don't look out that window," goes against every boy's natural inclination to explore and roam. "If that boy insults or hits you, don't fight back, tell the teacher." Sorry, that is just not the way males are wired. We are meant to have spines.

Like I said in another thread, 2/3 of private colleges are dominated by women, and you can find various sociology articles that will even explain that modern society is more and more geared toward to "female qualities".

You top this off with the new feminist agenda, that drills in men at an early age "Respect women, respect women, or else you're going to look like a rapist," and what you have is a plethora of young confused males, who have hidden their natural male impulses. I'm not talking about aggressive impulses. I'm talking about normal ones, like not being scared around females and not being scared to show sexual interest.

No man wants to go to work from 8-6 M-F, sitting in a cubicle, ignoring nature, being bossed around, so that can have enough money to buy himself Axe spray, a new polo shirt, and go to a bar every Friday night where he can sit patiently and wait for a female to give him the "sign," so that he can buy her a drink, shower with her attention, and then pray that maybe just maybe she'll show more interest in him.

This is not what young males grow up dreaming about. So, you can imagine that many men get excited when they see programs about PUA. They think, "yes, that's right, I can take control of my own life. I am my own man." These little tricks to get attention from women are the downside of a PUA, because they ultimately distract from the core message, which is more or less, "self belief at all costs," and seeking approval from no one but yourself, in a society that has taught us to seek approval from everyone but ourselves.

And Dave, sorry to say, but if you feel the need to try to convince a woman logically of your viewpoint, to seek their approval of your opinion, , then you've failed to understand the real message.

 

What a bizarre, delusional rant.

Because female children are ever so inclined to be bossed around and not look out windows or fight ... mhmm. Poor men. Women just love working 8-6 M-F so that they can douse themselves in Dior, put on a skanky dress and get harassed by men who think there're tricks to picking us up other than just addressing us like fellow human beings. We all grow up dreaming about men who put their masculinity above common decency.

 

I'm going to address this in more detail.

The primary problem with your arguments, as I see it, is that you're making those arguments entirely in the context of stereotyped male and female behavior. Yes, a passive man who never asks for or negotiates for what he wants is likely to have relationship problems, and likely to be a boring character. And so is a passive woman who never asks for or negotiates for what she wants.

Asking for what you want, and negotiating for what you want, and eventually walking away if you're not getting enough of what you want, is not "being a man", it's being an emotionally healthy adult.

You talk about alpha and beta. I'm not comfortable with a relationship that has a single person who is consistently in the lead, but I can shrug and accept that some people are comfortable being a companion and a helper, a valued and respected contributor, but never quite in charge. I wouldn't be willing to be in a relationship where the leadership role didn't swap back and forth depending on context, but I wouldn't say that my relationship model is the only one that can be healthy.

Going to the pack-behavior metaphor that produces the apha/beta concept, we also have the omega or scapegoat, the bullied and despised bottom rung of the pack. This, I do feel is inherently unhealthy.

(I'm going with the term "scapegoat" because in Googling the terms in the context of relationships, I see that "omega" is most often used to refer to a healthy loner, not to refer to someone sticks around to be bullied. "Scapegoat" often also has connotiations of strength, especially in the context of families and when it's combined with "truth-teller", but I'm too lazy to coin my own term.)

In some relationships, there's a "low man" partner who is not the valued and respected companion, but instead the bullied and despised scapegoat. Your "be a man" argument seems to be coming down to "don't be the scapegoat." Yeah. Fine. But that has nothing to do with being a man. Neither man or woman should be in that role.

PUA's are preying on people who have been trained, probably from childhood, to accept abuse as normal, as evidence of love. PUAs are contemptible creatures, and emulating their strategies is unlikely to lead you to a good relationship. (I, too, very much doubt that they actually succeed a fraction as often as they claim, but that's a different issue; if someone told me that he'd found the perfect way to embezzle money, my main issue would not be whether the technique actually works.)

Will it lead you to a best-seller? The abused often seek relationships with abusers, and they may well seek books about abusers, too. Stories about male romantic "heroes" abusing women "because they love them" will have a market. You could probably write stories about women abusing men "because they love them", too, and abused men would probably buy them. Books that foster the lie that abuse is motivated by love will probably sell to certain members of both sexes. But I don't want that money.

If you could stomach treating the women here with respect, there's probably a discussion here that you could participate in.

But when you try to tell us "girls"/"gals" that stories about arrogant man-children are what we want, if we were just "honest"? When you try to tell us that your manly knowledge of what we think, want, and feel, is greater than our own knowledge of ourselves?

No. Sorry; you're not my alpha, and I'm not your scapegoat.

 

Of course! The real message is that a lasting, satisfying relationship is formed by having a complete disregard for the other person. Wasn't that obvious?

 

You may have just told us how to create the perfect female romantic lead. She rekindles a male character's sense of adventure, mischief, and chutzpah that was repressed by his civilized upbringing.

Also, thank you for writing that -- the phrase "don't look out that window" reminded me of a scene from a novel I recently read. Now that I think about it again, I realize its significance. And its significance has a lot to do with the novel's female romantic lead, who is the type of character I just described.

 

oh cool, so that's how the ignore function works!

 

Yoo hoo (waving madly...) - what in tarnation is 'PUA?' I've been away too long?

 

@jannert : Read and weep... http://www.puatraining.com

And for better insight into people who use these methods http://www.pick-up-artist-forum.com

 

I dread even trying to put this train wreck back on the rails...

Forget the PUA reference. Just. Forget. It. I cited it as an oblique source of some material but everyone is now under the impression I condone or worship the PUA world. I do not.

Also, the terms 'alpha' and 'beta' are used here to describe a personality, not an individual. I never suggested in a couple one person would be wholly one or the other. I said that there needs to be a mix of both characteristics so that an individual is not an extreme.

If you want to write good characters, you need to study people. I do it all the time. My 7th grade English teacher (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and women knew their place...yes, that's a JOKE ChickenFreak) told us during a discussion of Shakespeare that old William was such an effective writer because he knew people, as in understood them. I'll use Taming Of The Shrew as an example. The male character Petruchio is decidedly 'alpha'. So is the female 'shrew' Katherine--this is what makes the story interesting. As 'alphas' they butt heads and don't get along. Only when both permit a level of 'beta' to enter their relationship do they reconcile, and ultimately (if I recall the story correctly) respect and love each other.

A blend of alpha and beta is what most all of us are.

How presumptuous of you. I was raised with a very healthy respect for women. I married a woman who participated in male dominated sports through most of her life; she has little tolerance for typical chauvinism. I am far more in tune today of what females in general, and my spouse in particular, want from a long term relationship than I was 20 years ago.

You see it as inevitable; I see it (now) as preventable.

Well, first I would argue that love between adults is hardly unconditional. Dogs and children may love unconditionally, but adults most certainly do have conditions to remaining affectionate and loyal to partners.
What happens most often is not that people forcibly change their personality to suit someone, but that their original personality (the one that your love interest adored and fell for) has become lost over time. Between the distractions of life, child rearing, jobs, and (the big one) what society has programmed us to believe is the right way to 'act', we lose who we are and become someone less interesting and less attractive in physical and personality facets both.

This does not happen to everyone, but it occurs with such frequency it is frightfully common. Even marriages that look good on the outside are often far more dark and shaky than a mere spectator would imagine.

Hooray! One person got it!

 

Fair enough and thank god for that I was like whaat? I thought he was a nice guy! (pun intended )

 

That's good, but are you able to understand that the females themselves are likely to know, better than you, what they want? Is that really hard to accept?

 

But they may not know, or be conflicted about it because of what popular culture, feminism, etc have taught them they should believe or want. Many (men and women both) may feel something is missing, but not know what that something is.

Really not a topic relevant to this thread, so I'll stop there.