Party Members, MacGuffins, and Fetch Quests - The Sad State of the Love Interest

I don't like romantic sub-plots. Never have - I think they're over-used, repetitive, and usually feel detrimental and extraneous to the narrative. I understand why they exist in theory, but in practice, every time I see the tell-tale signs of a budding romance (usually between the male lead and the only female character present), I groan and give the author a mental smack across the knuckles.

The worst part is, all the things I hate about romantic sub-plots - and romance in general, really - could be resolved pretty easily. Mostly through diversifying the roles, genders, sexual orientations, races, priorities and characters of those involved.

Sounds like a lot of beans to heap over one piece of toast, doesn't it? And no one likes tokenism - it's like those nasty little cheap weiner-sausage-yuckies that sometimes sneak into the mix and leave a bad taste in your mouth.

But it's all much, much simpler if you think about it in more empirical terms. Ask yourself one question.

Is my love interest a Party Member, a MacGuffin, or a Fetch Quest?

Confused? Allow me to explain.

A love interest who is a Party Member is exactly the sort of love interest you want - a character with motivations and a personality of their own, who would have a role in the story even if the romantic element was removed. Want a good example? Hermione Granger, from the later installments of the Harry Potter books. Her romantic attachment to Ron is brought up only when relevant, and it is built up organically through their engagement as characters, friends, and fellows in their mission. She's a Party Member first, a love interest second.

Meanwhile, a MacGuffin love interest may have a big role in the story . . . but it's nothing to do with them, really. Like the object for which I have named them, a MacGuffin love interest serves as a motivation and endgame for the protagonist, but in a passive way. This character has no more use to the narrative than that which is imbued by their status as love interest. A prime example would be Edward Cullen in the Twilight saga. Whatever he may otherwise be doing, his purpose in the narrative is to be a goal for Bella, dangled before her like a carrot on the end of a stick. She may have other things to prove and resolve along the way, but all Edward gets to do is sit at the finishing line, making sure he's at his very sparkly best for when the conquering heroine finally rocks up to claim her prize.

On the other end of the scale, we have the Fetch Quest love interest. Like its cousin the MacGuffin, the Fetch Quest love interest has no purpose in the narrative other than being the love interest - but this time they're not so much an endgame as something to do when the rest of the plot needs a break. Think Peeta and Gale from The Hunger Games - particularly the latter two books. Katniss has a much bigger goal and better things to be getting on with than deciding who she wants to snog, but the narrative obliges her, occasionally, to break flow and sit down and have a little romantic moment with one or the other, just for the sake of keeping that pot boiling, never mind that whatever's inside has evaporated, burned, and stuck to the bottom to annoy the heck out of whoever finds it in the middle of their delicious supper.

As you may have recognised by now, the literary world is full of MacGuffin and Fetch Quest love interests. The MacGuffin is usually more the domain of the female-targetted market - a symptom of another unfortunate endemic in the book world, wherein female protagonists may be as kickass as they like, but their final epic purpose cannot escape being bound up with romantic fulfilment. The Fetch Quest, meanwhile, dominates across mediums - from the oldest form of video games, rescuing kidnapped girlfriends and princesses in 8-bit, through to the bajillion-and-one Not Another Dirty Harry detectives sweeping up sultry temptresses and earnest-but-sexy reporters as they chase down Not Another Russian Stereotype.

I don't know why this is - industry demands, lack of creative freedom in authors (or maybe just lack of creativity altogether) - but, as I have said before, and I will no doubt continue to say until I demand it carved on my headstone in my cantankerous, rattly death-throes, it does not have to be this way, and it should not. Diversity and development are central parts of the literary tradition - it's a simple matter of doing what we always do, and digging in to undo and reform parts of the old engine that need to be updated if it is to continue its progress into the modern world.

Let's leave the old tropes in the past, where they belong. We are entering a new age - one where your gender, race, and sexuality should have nothing do with your worth as a person, or your role in the world around you.

Let's make every love interest a Party Member - one book at a time.

~ Charley R

In Defence of the Love Interest

. . . Now there's a title I bet you never thought you'd see me write.

Romance is a squicky business in writing - namely because it's one of those things where, if you don't know what you're doing, it will show up brighter than a giant jelly elephant that swallowed a combusting nuclear reactor.

Romance. At it's worst, it's boring, cliche'd, slows the plot, undermines the action, and seriously inhibits the development of characters as independent, self-reliant people. It's no wonder, really, that when I discuss my favourite books with my friends, much of our character-related wrath will be directed towards three main archetypes:

1) Creeper Creeperson Creepy III - the character that makes our skin crawl so much that it carries us under the desk, where we retreat into deep dark pits of ick-induced loathing.

2) Angsty McAngstyPants - who really needs to lighten up before we gouge our own eyes out just to make ourselves feel better.

and 3) The Love Interest.

Good characterisation is essential to a story, so when this particular individual shows up in the midst of the melee and proposes themself as being of equal importance, despite doing nothing more than screaming, demanding explanations, and snogging their other half's face off, the reader is understandably annoyed. A character like this is highly unlikely to generate any sort of interest - it would be a bit like David Attenborough encouraging us to focus on the presence of the leech attached to the rear end of the lioness, insisting that this pulsating parasite's bowel movement is somehow just as important as the two-hundred-pound mass of golden-coated awesome who just hurled herself at a wildebeest big enough to snap her in half with one toss of its head.

On the other hand, I don't think that the archetype of the love interest character deserves as much flack as it often gets. Romance and relationships are a great way to explore aspects of a character that we might not neccessarily see otherwise, and romantic development is worth no less than, say, development via courage, tutelage, or very painful life lessons. Love interests can also make their other half far more interesting in their own right: where would Robin Hood be without plucky Maid Marian to keep things under control at home, and be on hand with the plasters and bruise ointment after one feat of derring-do too many? And, let's face it, James Bond might as well be Jack Reacher without the epic lineage of Bond girls to showcase his trademark charm. When they're not snarking, sabotaging, saving, or attempting to assassinate him, that is.

That said, treating a character as a love interest alone is never helpful. If you want people to care about your characters, creating one whose sole purpose in the story is to be a satellite to another is a pretty backward way of going about it.

Furthermore, you're wasting so much potential! Sure, you need the love interest for various reasons - they're very versatile plot-wise, though you may not believe it - but why not also incorporate them into the rest of the story, giving them other roles outside their romantic attachment? It certainly makes the story more economical, as you won't have to spend so much time keeping track of secondary characters who are covering relatively unimportant bases, such as certain talents, expertise, and discoveries necessary to the story that could just as easily be fulfilled by someone else.

On that note, there's another bonus here, which may be of particular interest to those authors like myself (i.e. those of a more sadistic persuasion). By connecting the love interest more strongly to the world, and to the story, thus making them more interesting in their own right, the inevitable strain and stress in the relationship that may feature as part of your story will be more tangible and emotionally compromising for the reader.

For example, when I read Laini Taylor's "Days of Blood and Starlight" (the spectacular sequel to "Daughter of Smoke and Bone", the review of which is in the right-hand sidebar), the breakdown of the relationship between the two main characters was made incredibly powerful through the author's - and subsequently our - sensitivity to presenting both characters with equal amounts of heart-wrenching pathos. This connection to their individual physical and emotional difficulty nearly reduced me to tears on a number of occasions.

Conversely, I have also been known to roll about on the floor in fits of hysteria at the same attempted level of emotional manipulation in stories where the love interest is about as interesting as a cardboard cut-out. Language and emotion that might have been anything from touching to soul-destroying now appears merely over-wrought and melodramatic. By extension, the emotional crux of the story is undermined, and the whole novel, like the offending love interest, begins to decompose into a soggy, apathetic mush.

So, the moral of the story is this: be fair to your love interest. A character's a character, whatever their purpose, so make sure you treat them as such. Give them lives, ambitions, dreams and sorrows; give them the same time and attention you put into your heroes, your villains, and that one character that you like too much to kill off just yet.

Because nobody deserves to be written off as an over-glorified plot point.

~ Charley R