Love Day Shenanigans: Creating Swoon-Worthy Love Interests, Part I

Happy love day to all the lovers out there! In honor of Valentine’s Day this year, I’m kicking off this 4-part series on creating love interests that will make your readers swoon. Whether the romance is central to the story, or a subplot within another genre, creating magnetic, obsession-worthy love interests is an art form, and one to master if your goal is to steam up the pages.

One of the best to do it is one of my favourite authors, Kelley Armstrong. There’s no shortage of praise to offer Armstrong, who wrote a host of paranormal series that basically kick-started my love for the genre. Today, we’re focusing on some of the methods she uses that have readers like me wishing her love interests were real.

Over the next four parts, we’ll be studying Clayton Danvers from Bitten, the first book in her Otherworld series and Gabriel Walsh from Omens, which is the first book in her Cainsville series. Some things I’ve picked up from drooling over these men include:

• Making the love interest more than just eye candy
• Giving the love interest a worthy competitor
• Making sure the love interest knows their place
• Creating an obstacle that stops the heroine from being with the love interest
• Giving the love interest a bit of a bad boy streak

Making the Love Interest More Than Just Eye-Candy

Pretty people are nice to look at, believe me, I know. But if you hang around them long enough, eventually you get used to their prettiness, and if there’s nothing beneath the surface, that can get boring fast. The same thing will happen with your love interest if they have nothing to offer the story except their good looks, but there are a lot of things you can do to give them more depth.

Conventionally Attractive Traits

If Steve Harvey asked 100 women what they look for in an ideal romantic partner, conventionally attractive traits would be the answers on the board. That’s intelligence, wealth, physical strength, or a big who-ha, if you know what I mean. Other easy sells include having a successful career, or being a prodigy in some way.

Clay is your typical blonde-haired, blue-eyed devil and Elena describes him as incredibly attractive. So much so that his good looks actually annoy her when the story first begins. He’s also a genius academic with a Ph.D. and a thriving career specializing in anthropomorphic religions. It’s a mouthful, but it’s hot and we can give him bonus points because weird interests suggest a sharp wit.

On paper, Clay would make an awesome bachelor and he would have a stellar dating profile. Still, be careful with these low-hanging character traits. They may give your love interest a romantic boost, but if you load too many of them into one person, you risk creating a love interest that’s unrealistically perfect or two-dimensional. I like to use these traits sparingly, usually to counteract your love interest’s negative traits, but we’ll talk more about that in part 4.

Soft Character Traits

Many people like their love interests rough and tumble like a late-2000s Idris Elba in Takers (2010), but don’t shy away from some softer traits when you’re looking to create the perfect person to steal your heroine’s heart. Does he tear up a bit when watching The Notebook? That’s sweet. Is he immune to the petty societal differences that make your heroine an outsider in the larger group? That’s sexy. Does he stay up all night making gluten-free pasta for his little sister so she doesn’t feel left out during spaghetti day at school? Swoon!

In Bitten, Elena was a foster care kid and never had a traditional Christmas growing up. Clay going out of his way to make Christmas special for her was one of the big bonding events in their relationship history. One of his more human moments in the story is when we learn he saved all the gifts he bought for Elena after she didn’t show up to Stonehaven for Christmas the year before (and didn’t give them a heads up she wasn’t coming). The sheer number of gifts piling up in the closet is wholly excessive, and it helps us imagine how crushed he must have been when the entire day passed without her making an appearance. He’s a devil and a scoundrel—Elena’s words—but he has a heart, and it makes us root for him.

Consider these softer traits the humanizing parts of your love interest, since your heroine will have some soft spots of her own with her inner flaw or emotional wound. Superman may be a great guy, but I wouldn’t want to complain to him about my day. He seems way too above it all. Clark Kent, on the other hand…

Challenge the Heroine

One of the sexiest parts about a great love interest is the way they challenge the heroine. This is typically an emotional challenge, but it doesn’t have to be, and a love interest who makes your heroine reconsider her values is a keeper. Not only do we humans love a challenge, but happy people are boring to read about.

Elena feels immediate irritation when we meet Clay for the first time and that’s one reason we’re drawn to him. Being around him makes her angry, confrontational, and even a little childish, and we, the audience, recognize this is who she really is, even if she’s pretending otherwise. They compete in ways that bring out their best selves and since neither is afraid of the other’s temper, it leaves them free to say exactly how they feel when they fight. More importantly, he contradicts her desires for a normal human life and being around him forces her to grapple with the possibility that the life she wants is incompatible with who she is.

How does your love interest make your heroine second-guess herself? How easily can he irritate her or rile her to anger? The caveat here is that being around someone who makes you feel the entire spectrum of your emotional being, and whose presence challenges you to grow in ways you otherwise wouldn’t, is exciting and enlightening. Being around someone who consistently stresses you out for the hell of it is not. Not all conflict is healthy or productive, so make sure your love interest challenges his heroine in ways that hold up a mirror to the parts of herself she hates the most and pushes her to change them or accept them.

Story Contribution

We’ve talked a lot about characterizing your love interest, but don’t forget, he actually has to do something. Let’s be honest, a man who can’t pull his weight is a lady-boner killer, and the same principles apply in your story. His presence needs to impact the story in meaningful ways, otherwise he’s as useless as men who “babysit” their own kids.

In Omens, Gabriel is damned good at what he does, which makes him an invaluable resource to help Olivia prove her biological parents innocent. His roots in Cainsville allow him to act as a guide for Olivia and give her credibility with the other townspeople, who are naturally suspicious of outsiders. Gabriel is also one third of the curse that binds him, Olivia, and Rick together (more on this later), which makes him an intrinsic part of the external plot their romance revolves around.

The point is, your love interest isn’t there to take up space. He’s there to make an earth-shattering impact on your story and the heroine herself, so arm him with the things he needs to play that role.

Conclusion

In creating both Clay and Gabriel, Armstrong checks a lot of boxes that ensure that their pretty faces are the least interesting thing about them. The result is that we get excited whenever they’re on screen. What are some of your favourite things to see in a romance love interest? Tune in next Monday to see if any of them come up in part 2!