“Cindy Jones gave up on love, years ago, when her high school sweetheart, Biff Biffington, cheated on her with her best friend, Laura. Though crushed in spirit, she soldiered on, making a life for herself in the big city. A life without love.”
Every one of us carries our past with us. How it affects our present has a lot to do with the intensity of our past impressions, our current life attitude, and our hopes and dreams for our future. What crushes one person may have little discernible effect on another. However, we can agree, that losing a parent, a child, or something else equally dear to us will have a profound effect on her daily life, from that day forward.
This is why many writing books suggest giving your characters backstories (even if you don’t use them in your book). You can’t know what a person is in the present until you study their past.
A word of warning: there are far too many romance novels on the market that involve broken-hearted women who are eager for sexual escapades, but utterly unwilling to risk their heart by falling in love with their partners.
Cindy Jones is looking for a–dildo with a pulse. Nothing more. Because Biff Biffington–the bastard–tore her beating heart from her chest when she was only a wide-eyed innocent of sixteen.
Of course, we know Cindy will fall for her new lover in the end, but that’s scarcely the point. Your heroine needs more obstacles in the way of her romance than a disinclination to expose parts of her body above her hips.
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