alpha-jerks |

You know who I mean. Pirates, vikings, highwaymen, vampires, rakes, thieves, spies, assassins, ruthless billionaires, gang members — men who will take whatever they want, careless of who is hurt in the process.

Whatever the story, the trope has the bad boy discovering his inner humanity because he has fallen in love. I’m not convinced. It’s not that I don’t believe in the possibility of redemption: people can change, they do it all the time. They can even be motivated to change because a new relationship causes them to examine their fundamental assumptions. But I wouldn’t count on the love of a good woman redeeming a bad man.

In most of the stories I’ve read with this as a plot line, they’re not even redeemed! They treat their woman well, but go on behaving just as badly to everyone else. Not my idea of good marriage material.

In my coming plots, I have a number of bad boys to redeem. They’re going to have to struggle through the redemption process themselves, maybe motivated by the wish to please one particular woman, but also motivated by a recognition that previous behaviour hasn’t brought them happiness, has hurt other people, and needs to stop if they’re to become the kind of person they want to be.

What do you think? Have you read any good ‘bad boy makes good’ stories.

I’ve written about aspects of this before. See:

In praise of decent men

Rakes, rapists, and alpha-jerks

Human beings and intimacy

The Jude Knight Manifesto

All you need is love

I was talking to a friend about the stories I write, and what they have in common. When I said they all explore the shape and boundaries of intimacy, I found I’d taken us down a cul-de-sac of different interpretations, which was interesting.

To my friend, intimacy meant physical intimacy. To me, physical intimacy is an essential, but the least important part, of a romance. As I’ve posted before (in All you need is love and The Jude Knight Manifesto), I’m far more interested in creating connections between my characters that are emotional, intellectual, familial, and spiritual.

So what is the enduring appeal of stories about entitled alpha-jerks who accidentally discover true love with the woman they intended merely as a convenient shag-buddy? You know the ones I mean. The hero is a duke or a billionaire or a football star, and the heroine is unwillingly intrigued, but ultimately gives up her own dreams to make his come true. Such tales usually come with explicit descriptions of the sexual act that focus on the woman’s pleasure, which often seems to be directly associated with her helplessness.

The Guardian had an interesting article on why many leading writers are abandoning such story lines. Do you read them? Do you write them? Can you explain this phenomenon to me?