There’s lots of different advice out there on how authors should handle negative reviews. Some people recommend ignoring or not even looking at reviews, while others suggest reading and applying every critique. The right answer is somewhere in between.
While there are trolls and jerks out there, when a significant number of readers give the same negative feedback on your work, it is a sign that there’s something wrong. So should you apply their criticism and change your book? Maybe, but probably not. Readers are excellent at knowing whether they like something, but they’re not always great at knowing why they loved or hated a book.
That’s where this series of blog posts comes in. I’m going to help you decode and demystify the most common criticism received by romance authors. As a romance novel book coach and developmental editor, I have the skills and training to take what people say and translate it into what they actually mean.
The Protagonist Was Too Perfect
Another common critique romance authors receive is that the protagonist was ‘too perfect’. In novels where the reader also gets the love interest’s point of view, the critique is sometimes that he is too perfect, or that both of them are too perfect. So what do readers mean when they say this? Don’t they want characters to be likable? Should you make the love interest short, fat, and broke? Should you make the protagonist a superior jerk who goes through life treating everyone around her like they’re not good enough to breathe her air? What is the proper response to the critique that your characters are too perfect?
Don’t they want characters to be likable?
Let’s address these one by one. First, yes, the reader absolutely wants your characters to be likable. In fact, that’s the problem. A female main character (protagonist) who is ‘too perfect’ often feels unrelatable to the audience. Readers struggle to connect with this flawless beauty who handles every situation with the perfect balance of grace and assertiveness, who never gives in to anger or insecurity, and who is excelling at life, perfectly balancing her career, family, and social life. What your readers are asking for with this critique is a character who has room for growth and change. In other words, they want to see a character arc.
So, should I make my FMC a jerk?
You definitely don’t want to write a female main character who is a jerk. Morality stories—like Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which feature an unlikable protagonist whose entire plot is about helping him become a decent person—are extremely difficult to write. Audiences want to read a book where they can connect with and root for the protagonist, so writing a character they are supposed to dislike while still hooking them is tricky. It is also not the sort of thing romance readers are looking for.
While ‘moral weight’—the idea that the lovers need to grow as people in order to be together—is a convention of romance novels, the character flaw needs to be relatable. As Lisa Cron explains in her book, Wired For Story, “[s]tories are about how we, rather than the world around us, change.” While Wired For Story is a great book, and I definitely recommend giving it a read, its concepts are too deep for us to dive into here. Suffice it to say that you can give your protagonist a character arc without turning her into an awful person the reader dislikes.
What about the love interest?
Your readers said the male main character, also known as the love interest, is too perfect. What should you do? Should you make him short, fat, and broke? The reality is that, while the body positivity movement has authors featuring FMCs of all shapes and sizes, there is still not a space for MMCs who are balding and have a beer gut. In fact, while “overly perfect” is frequently featured as a disparaging description of rival females in romance novels, the opposite is true of male characters. The love interests are all tall, muscled, and successful. Even if they are mountain men living off the land, they are exceptional at what they do. After all, this is romance. How can the love interest be too perfect? Aren’t readers looking for an ideal man?
Yes and no. While market trends definitely suggest that readers are looking for a physically perfect MMC, they are not looking for an emotionally perfect MMC. After all, if your protagonist is struggling through body image issues, insecurity from past relationships, or other character arc issues, and the love interest is always perfectly calm, patient, and understanding, going above and beyond to meet her needs and guard her feelings, she starts to look pathetic by comparison.
If, however, his own issues have him unintentionally (or even intentionally) trampling all over her insecurities, then we have more empathy and less irritation when she chooses to stuff everything down instead of talking through her issues with him.
How to Build a Character Arc
Resources such as Wired For Story by Lisa Cron and Creating Character Arcs by K. M. Weiland are fantastic for learning how to create and incorporate a character arc for your lovers. And, of course, a workshop with a romance editor or book coach can be a great way to work on this as well.
Was the Protagonist “Too Perfect”
If Amazon and Goodreads reviews consistently say your characters are “too perfect”, what they’re really asking you for isn’t an anti-hero or an unlikable protagonist. Your readers just want to see growth and change; they want a character arc.
As an author, it is hard to read between the lines of what readers say to discover what they mean. Drop some reviews you’ve received into the comments below and check back to see if your reader feedback makes it into the next blog post!
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