Prison Break

When you love someone, all your saved-up wishes start coming out.
~Elizabeth Bowen

Let me count how many ways I love this show.

I love the characters: complex, well-developed, mysterious, compelling.

I love the premise: bad boys break each other out of jail and make you cheer for them even though they’re felons.

I love the writing: clever and just twisted enough to keep you on the edge of your seat the entire 60 minutes.

I loved last night’s finale. What a shocker! The only bummer is that now I have to wait until January 22 for it to start up again…

I found an interesting article yesterday as I was browsing info about characterization. Now, I do agree with what the speaker said here about making male characters “real” enough, and I thought she had some great points about the ways in which men and women differ that ought to be clear in novels.

But here’s a question: do we need to read romance to remind ourselves that men "use less words” or that "men's humor tends to be cruder than women's"? Or do the vast majority of romance readers pick up a novel to fall in love with a hero who is different than Mr. Everyday? Isn’t part of writing romance to create a character who is both ruggedly masculine and in touch with his inner softie, one who can be authoritative and develop a thought that is outside the realm of SPORTS-SEX-WORK?

Do we write what we know, or what we dream of? Do we read to agree, or to escape? Or a little bit of both?