Not So Bad Boys

It's a Theme Week! All this week I'm posting on matters of romance in young adult fiction. So sit back, invite your favorite fictional love interest, and enjoy! (Okay, look guys, I know Martin the Warrior is a mouse. But he's a freaking brave mouse! And when Rose got thrown against the wall and killed my poor sixth grade self bawled her eyes out! So you can just keep your hot boys to yourself. I'm gonna hang out here with my stalwart, brave little mouse warrior.)

There's a reason they say nice guys finish last. I'm not sure why that reason is in real life, but I can tell you why it is in fiction: It's a heck of a lot harder to make a nice guy interesting and compelling than a bad boy. Bad boys come complete with mystery and drama--it's part of the package (along with the leather jackets--must have the leather jackets, please!). But how do you make someone who is honest and kind and funny and, well, good read as hot as a bad boy?

I've seen several methods that work incredibly well. Take Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely (which has one of my favorite titles of all time) and Lisa McMann's Wake. Both of them feature love interests that could be seen as a bad boy. (In Wake, Cabel remains suspect for much of the novel.) They have piercings. Mysterious (and not always accurate) histories. A tendency toward not talking much (which, hey, instant-intrigue!). But what the books do is reveal to you that although Seth and Cabel might appear to be bad boys, they're actually a couple of the warmest, most loyal and thoughtful boyfriends I've read in the last couple of years. What these authors have done is taken the bad boy stereotype and used it to house Genuinely Good Guys. Genius.

Another way to make a good guy interesting is to travel the "I know he'd be good for me but I can't have him...yet" route. That way you can extol the virtues of the guy, but the fact that he's unattainable (best friend, dating someone else, co-workers, different school social class, so on and so forth) creates the drama and the tension that his actions and behavior don't necessarily provide. I love these ones. The giddy anticipation of WHEN. When will Awesome Guy and Adorable Girl finally be able to get together? How will it work out? Ah. Delicious. (Just wait until you read Stephanie Perkins' books--she is the master of romance. [I was going to say Mistress of Romance, but that makes it sound like she runs a brothel.] Trust me on this one. I'm literally giddy with anticipation over people getting to read her and her boys.) (In fact, once that happens, none of you will ever want to bring anyone else to these blog posts. It'll be a sea of Stephanie's characters.)

Finally, there's the Good Guy with Problems. Whatever is going on plot-wise, the circumstances of the story make dating him difficult--or downright dangerous. That way the drama isn't coming from the relationship and doesn't hinge on problems between the characters. Once again we can point to Hunger Games--Peeta and Gale are both basically good guys, and the drama comes from a) the triangle and b) the impossible situations they find themselves in. I find this type the most interesting when the story isn't about The Romance. The Romance can be a big part of the story, but I don't want the story to be simply a vehicle for getting Girl and Boy together. I want them to get together as a natural result of what happens in the story.)

I know I'm completely neglecting books written from a boy's point of view, but that's a horse of another color.

In the end, I think what contributes to a really compelling Good Guy is how the story unfolds. It's more difficult because you can't use inherent drama as a crutch, but going on that journey with the girl to get from here to there--there being him, of course--is what makes a good guy great.

(Of course, writing good guys makes sequels a pain in the...wrists. Because once you set up a happy ending in the first book, keeping things interesting in the second? Trickier than you'd think. Although, triangles would be an easy way out, and there is this really hot Weretiger named Jakov...)

(Kidding. Relationships in sequels is a whole new post that I'm not going to write because I'm too busy actually working on the sequel.)

Sound off in the comments: Who are your favorite Good Guy love interests? What made them compelling? And, if you read the Redwall series when you were younger, will you admit that you, too, crushed on the rodent heroes?