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kaitouSo I have totally been in the mood for fluffy, funny historical romance novels lately. Just...something happy you know? But most of what I've been reading is crap.
There is no excuse for this! Genre fiction, and I think romance novels in particular get a bad rap for being trash. But I've read a lot of good ones that I've really enjoyed. So when I was in the mood, and I couldn't find anything, I asked people for reccomendations. And I've been reading my way through them, and half of them make me want to committ an act of violence, because they're nice and readable until they introduce the idiot ball.
The Idiot Ball, in case you don't want to spend hours lost on TV Tropes, is when a reasonably bright character suddenly acts like an idiot, and that moment of idiocy drives the plot.
Now, I'm going to warn you up front that I have longwinded spoilers for Amanda Quick's "Ravished," Julia Quinn's "Just Like Heaven" and Jacquie D'Alessandro's "The Bride Thief."
So in Ravished, the heroine notices some nefarious goings-on in the neighborhood and contacts the dark-and-brooding landowner with a tragic past to have him fix it. We learn that the whole town thinks that this guy is involved with ruining a girl, getting her pregnant, at which point she committed suicide. He's been a social pariah ever since. He warns the heroine off so that her reputation isn't tarnished and promises to take care of the neighborhood trouble.
So then what happens?
There's a local party, and he shows up all of a sudden, goes straight to the heroine, has one dance with her (a waltz, which has never been played at these local parties before), then leaves without speaking to another soul. Yes, because no one in the town will EVER talk or make inferences about THAT.
No.
No. No. No. Doing something stupid and slightly out of character because of love/lust is hardly unheard of. But those are spur of the moment things. Making a foolish promise/claim, stealing a kiss in the heat of the moment, that sort of thing. But this act of stupidity involved the hero having to A.) Know there WAS a party. B.) Get dressed specifically for it. C.) Ride a few miles out to attend it. This OOC moment required HOURS of deliberate thought and action.
It's fairly obvious to me that the author felt she needed to have the townspeople gossiping about the Hero and Heroine. So she put in this scene. And then even she realizes that this makes no sense because she has the hero go home and say to himself "Why on earth did I do that?" Hanging a Lampshade on it does not make it not stupid, author. It just lets me know that even you know you could have done better.
How could the author have avoided the hero grabbing the idiot ball and making a touchdown? Hm. Well, maybe someone could have seen their secret meeting where she showed him where the nefarious deeds were taking place. Or hey, the house keeper knew that the Hero came to visit the house and he and the Heroine were alone together in a room, she could tell tales.
See? You've accomplished the same goal without having the Hero behave like an idiot.
In "Just Like Heaven" the main plot revolves around the hero getting a twisted ankle and then getting very sick after getting a nasty cut when they're cutting the boot off his ankle that gets badly infected. How does he get the twisted ankle?
Well at a house party the sugar-sweet heroine decides to make a fake mole hole, and then pretend to fall and twist her ankle. Presumably so that one of the men at the house party can 'rescue' her.
I say presumably because you're not actually in the heroine's head at this point. The hero watches her make the hole, comes up and talks to her, teases her about it, then forgets and gets his own foot stuck in it.
It's weird because this heroine is very sweet and good. She wants to get married, but she doesn't ever seem to be obsessed with getting a husband. There isn't any reason for her to try any trickery or scheming. And she's never presented as the sort of person who would think that sort of thing was acceptable. And she never does anything remotely scheming for the rest of the book. And again, this isn't a thoughtless action, she had to go get a shovel and proactively do something stupid and out of character.
Why is this scene even in there? Why would she do something so dumb? There isn't a single thing in the book that would change if she had been sitting outside, the hero came to talk to her, and then got his ankle twisted in an actual mole hole.
In contrast one of the reccomended books that I did really enjoy, "The Bride Thief" has some over the top melodramatic actions by the Hero and Heroine, mostly borne from Miscommunication. The thing that makes this different is that the dumb things they do are completely in character for them.
He does the whole 'I can't tell her my secret identity because it will put her in danger' schtick. And the 'I can't marry her becuase it will put her in danger' schtick. But it doesn't trigger my idiot ball alert because...well, he's an overly melodramatic idiot from the beginning.
The thing about the idiot ball is that it's unexpected, out of character, and deliberate. And, as you can see above, it's never necessary.
There is no excuse for this! Genre fiction, and I think romance novels in particular get a bad rap for being trash. But I've read a lot of good ones that I've really enjoyed. So when I was in the mood, and I couldn't find anything, I asked people for reccomendations. And I've been reading my way through them, and half of them make me want to committ an act of violence, because they're nice and readable until they introduce the idiot ball.
The Idiot Ball, in case you don't want to spend hours lost on TV Tropes, is when a reasonably bright character suddenly acts like an idiot, and that moment of idiocy drives the plot.
Now, I'm going to warn you up front that I have longwinded spoilers for Amanda Quick's "Ravished," Julia Quinn's "Just Like Heaven" and Jacquie D'Alessandro's "The Bride Thief."
So in Ravished, the heroine notices some nefarious goings-on in the neighborhood and contacts the dark-and-brooding landowner with a tragic past to have him fix it. We learn that the whole town thinks that this guy is involved with ruining a girl, getting her pregnant, at which point she committed suicide. He's been a social pariah ever since. He warns the heroine off so that her reputation isn't tarnished and promises to take care of the neighborhood trouble.
So then what happens?
There's a local party, and he shows up all of a sudden, goes straight to the heroine, has one dance with her (a waltz, which has never been played at these local parties before), then leaves without speaking to another soul. Yes, because no one in the town will EVER talk or make inferences about THAT.
No.
No. No. No. Doing something stupid and slightly out of character because of love/lust is hardly unheard of. But those are spur of the moment things. Making a foolish promise/claim, stealing a kiss in the heat of the moment, that sort of thing. But this act of stupidity involved the hero having to A.) Know there WAS a party. B.) Get dressed specifically for it. C.) Ride a few miles out to attend it. This OOC moment required HOURS of deliberate thought and action.
It's fairly obvious to me that the author felt she needed to have the townspeople gossiping about the Hero and Heroine. So she put in this scene. And then even she realizes that this makes no sense because she has the hero go home and say to himself "Why on earth did I do that?" Hanging a Lampshade on it does not make it not stupid, author. It just lets me know that even you know you could have done better.
How could the author have avoided the hero grabbing the idiot ball and making a touchdown? Hm. Well, maybe someone could have seen their secret meeting where she showed him where the nefarious deeds were taking place. Or hey, the house keeper knew that the Hero came to visit the house and he and the Heroine were alone together in a room, she could tell tales.
See? You've accomplished the same goal without having the Hero behave like an idiot.
In "Just Like Heaven" the main plot revolves around the hero getting a twisted ankle and then getting very sick after getting a nasty cut when they're cutting the boot off his ankle that gets badly infected. How does he get the twisted ankle?
Well at a house party the sugar-sweet heroine decides to make a fake mole hole, and then pretend to fall and twist her ankle. Presumably so that one of the men at the house party can 'rescue' her.
I say presumably because you're not actually in the heroine's head at this point. The hero watches her make the hole, comes up and talks to her, teases her about it, then forgets and gets his own foot stuck in it.
It's weird because this heroine is very sweet and good. She wants to get married, but she doesn't ever seem to be obsessed with getting a husband. There isn't any reason for her to try any trickery or scheming. And she's never presented as the sort of person who would think that sort of thing was acceptable. And she never does anything remotely scheming for the rest of the book. And again, this isn't a thoughtless action, she had to go get a shovel and proactively do something stupid and out of character.
Why is this scene even in there? Why would she do something so dumb? There isn't a single thing in the book that would change if she had been sitting outside, the hero came to talk to her, and then got his ankle twisted in an actual mole hole.
In contrast one of the reccomended books that I did really enjoy, "The Bride Thief" has some over the top melodramatic actions by the Hero and Heroine, mostly borne from Miscommunication. The thing that makes this different is that the dumb things they do are completely in character for them.
He does the whole 'I can't tell her my secret identity because it will put her in danger' schtick. And the 'I can't marry her becuase it will put her in danger' schtick. But it doesn't trigger my idiot ball alert because...well, he's an overly melodramatic idiot from the beginning.
The thing about the idiot ball is that it's unexpected, out of character, and deliberate. And, as you can see above, it's never necessary.
