(With apologies to Tami Cowden, a follow up to the last one)
Setting: Hip little bar on Ladies’ Night. Smooth leather seats, colorful blown-glass lights, stone and aluminum countertops and a bar stocked with martini glasses and top shelf vodka.
The SEDUCTRESS is already seated at a bar table, swirling an olive around the bottom of her glass. The LIBRARIAN walks in, clutching her purse, and the WAIF follows. The latter pauses in the doorway until the door slams on her backside, propelling her inside. The SEDUCTRESS laughs until the NURTURER gives her a dirty look. The CRUSADER is busy gathering chairs from around the bar to crowd at the table she’s claimed, and the SPUNKY KID is helping. The BOSS zooms in last minute, still on her cell phone, waggles her fingers at the assemblage, then snaps her finger at the waitress. The FREE SPIRIT comes over, pulls a pencil out of her upswept hair, and whips out a notepad.
FREE SPIRIT: What can I bring you guys this evening?
NURTURER: What are you doing here? I thought you quit the night gig.
FREE SPIRIT (shrugging): Just stocking up some extra cash before I head to Europe—
BOSS: You don’t get tips for chattering. I’ll have a scotch on the rocks.
LIBRARIAN: Just a club soda, please. With lime.
SEDUCTRESS: Another one of these.
FREE SPIRIT: Same guy’s tab as last time?
The SEDUCTRESS nods. The other ladies put in their drink orders, and the FREE SPIRIT departs with a tight smile at THE BOSS.
CRUSADER: So what’s up, ladies? Heard anything new recently?
WAIF (playing with the sugar packets): No. Maybe I can ask my boyfriend…
BOSS: I don’t rely on men to tell me jack. I find my own answers.
SEDUCTRESS: Hear that one, sister.
LIBRARIAN: What’s going on between those two?
BOSS: One too many times she’s been dressing in my clothes recently, that’s all.
The FREE SPIRIT returns with drinks.
SPUNKY KID (sipping her strawberry daiquiri): Are you saying there’s no new trends?
SEDUCTRESS (plucking the maraschino cherry from the top of the SPUNKY KID’S drink): Get into urban fantasy. It’s totally the new horizon.
LIBRARIAN: I’ve been doing very well in erotic romance. I can take my hair down until the cows come home.
SEDUCTRESS (sucking on her straw): That’s not all you’ve been doing.
SPUNKY KID: Huh?
BOSS: Oh, don’t pull that innocent act. No one buys it.
The FREE SPIRIT rushes by, her tray loaded with drinks.
NURTURER: Poor girl. Is she ever going to get any time off?
WAIF (sniffs): She’s mostly supporting cast, anyway, isn’t she?
NURTURER: Not in my neck of the woods, she’s not. I see her all over.
SPUNKY KID: Yeah, she asked me last week about joining the kids’ play group.
NURTURER: Did you let her? She’s a little… spacey, don’t you think?
CRUSADER (turning to SEDUCTRESS): So tell me more about this urban fantasy thing?
BOSS: Oh, you’ll love it. You usually get two guys.
The SEDUCTRESS waggles her eyebrows suggestively.
WAIF: I never got two.
SEDUCTRESS: That’s because you’re in para roms masquerading as urban fantasy, sweetlings. Another white wine spritzer?
The WAIF nods and waves to the FREE SPIRIT.
NURTURER (whispers to LIBRARIAN): You know why she’s going to Europe, right? She’s got a great new gig in the historicals.
LIBRARIAN: Always loved those.
She gets a dreamy look on her face.
BOSS (holding up her glass, filled with the dregs of her scotch): Here’s to the ancient past, where we have a world of opportunity!
Everyone lifts her glasses. The FREE SPIRIT twirls her washrag in the air and grins.
CRUSADER: We definitely have it easier than the guys. Why is that?
SEDUCTRESS: I don’t know. But I could use a bit of variety, you know what I’m saying?
The LIBRARIAN nods and takes another sip of her grasshopper.
CRUSADER: Also, I’m not entirely sure how pleased I am by the fact that so many of us are defined by our relationship to sex.
SPUNKY KID: You’re just not happy unless you have something to complain about, are you?
FREE SPIRIT: You guys want another round?
NURTURER: Stick around for a second. Rest your feet. We’re just about to toast a successful run for all of us.
FREE SPIRIT: I can drink to that.
She grabs a half finished beer on her tray, because she loves to live dangerously. They all clink glasses and quaff their beverages.
A devastatingly handsome man walks by, and every head at the table turns in his direction.
SEDUCTRESS: Dibs.
BOSS: Don’t think so.
WAIF (knocking her napkin to the floor): Oops. Oh…sir?
The BOSS rolls her eyes. The NURTURER leans over to retrieve the waif’s napkin. The LIBRARIAN studies his backside over the tops of her glasses. The CRUSADER and the SPUNKY KID immediately excuse themselves to go the restroom. But the FREE SPIRIT has the drop on them all. She asks for his drink order, and delivers it on a cocktail napkin with her phone number scribbled on it in purple ink.
FREE SPIRIT (under her breath, as she turns away and sashays back to the bar): I’m not the ditz they think I am.
LOL
Interesting choice of ending, Diana, given their complaint about being defined by their relationship to sex (and by extension, men).
by Jess March 7th, 2008 at 8:02 amWell, it is a romance blog.
Also, I am following the format of the companion piece, which also ends in pursuit of the love interest.
A lot of the male archetypes are dependent on their relationship to women, as well. Particularly the Charmer and the Bad Boy. I certainly don’t feel the same affinity toward the female archetype list as I do toward the male one. I can usually tell pretty quickly in my writing what archetype my male character would fall into, but I was three books into my series before I figured out what my heroine’s archetype would be!
by Diana Peterfreund March 7th, 2008 at 10:40 amGood point. (I forgot the original had that ending; I should’ve reread it before I commented.)
I suppose it was my knee-jerk reaction; when I really think about it, it’s easier for me to place the heroes into their archetypes re: women (best friend, charmer, alpha, beta, epsilon, whatever) than it is for me to do it with the heroines, to be honest. The archetypes you use are all there, but for some reason I don’t find myself thinking about heroines in those terms as easily as I do the heroes, probably because I am female and so I insert myself into the heroine’s shoes and everyone else is in relation to me; there’s no reason to think about the heroine that way when I do that.
That and I don’t tend to think of “superpowerful butt-kicking spunky yet feminine and sexy heroine” (mainly inhabiting UF as it were) as an archetype but more of a cliche these days. I mean, look, she didn’t even show up to the party. Or is she just a combination of all of them, like some superarchetype? >.>
Enlighten me before I trip over my greek letters again.
by Jess March 7th, 2008 at 10:53 amJedi: I am not the stud you are looking for.
by Patrick March 7th, 2008 at 10:54 amJedi: I am not the stud you are looking for.
by Patrick March 7th, 2008 at 10:54 amJess, I agree with you, I don’t always often think of the heroines in terms of archetypes, either (I must have been editing my post while you were responding — no tea yet!)
As for the ““superpowerful butt-kicking spunky yet feminine and sexy heroine” of UF I think the can belong to different archetypes depending on her core persona. She may be the boss, or the crusader (the Cowden page uses Buffy the Vampire Slayer as an example of Crusader). She may be the seductress or the spunky kid. And, as I hinted in the skit, she may be the waif pretending to the butt-kicking. I’ve seen that a fair amount.
If you read the Cowden book or take the class, you learn that the real test of archetype is not so much their personality, but their behavior. You could have a character that looks and talks and walks like a librarian — that works at a library! — but if you lock her in a basement with a bomb and she uses, say, sex appeal, rather than book knowledge, to get out, she’s actually a seductress.
When I took the class we put characters to the “locked in a basement with a bomb” test.
by Diana Peterfreund March 7th, 2008 at 11:05 amHow does one seduce a bomb in the basement?
by Patrick March 7th, 2008 at 11:09 amYoda: “You must unlearn what you have learned.”
by Kimber An March 7th, 2008 at 11:16 amSuch violence! Did you feel the same negativity for the guys, who were sniping and swiping each other’s chairs?
One of my romance novelist friends once told me that she can make her heroes do any fool thing she wants — they can be absolutely horrible, and the readers stills loves him. But if her heroine makes ONE mistake…. burn her at the stake.
Interesting, no?
by Diana Peterfreund March 7th, 2008 at 11:25 am
My Tribbles grow fangs and chase the two-dimensional heroes out the door. 
by Kimber An March 7th, 2008 at 11:45 amWell, to be fair, guys are supposed to be stupid and make mistakes. It’s part of our charm. Everyone loves a fix’er up’er.
by Patrick March 7th, 2008 at 12:53 pmDiana, what can I say. I adore you!
by Kalen Hughes March 7th, 2008 at 1:50 pmFun, Diana. I liked the hero skit you did a while back, too. Clever. Why don’t you come over and do a fun blog for us at http://www.chasingheroes.com where all we do is talk about heroes, particularly the archetypes. There’s a section on the female archetypes, too. We’d love to have your wit for a day.
by Misa Ramirez March 7th, 2008 at 4:17 pm“If you read the Cowden book or take the class, you learn that the real test of archetype is not so much their personality, but their behavior. You could have a character that looks and talks and walks like a librarian — that works at a library! — but if you lock her in a basement with a bomb and she uses, say, sex appeal, rather than book knowledge, to get out, she’s actually a seductress.” This is so true and the true test for all or us and our characters.
[...] there was a column written by Diana Peterfreund (Secret Society Girl) that was a skit about the female archetypes. She did one a while back on the hero archetypes, too. The posts are funny and clever and touch [...]
by Chasing Heroes March 10th, 2008 at 7:24 am