Writing Strong Female Leads

Viviana rose, not out of fear, she simply could not abide sitting while an animal paced. “Okay.” she said, a Cheshire grin spreading across her face.

I write dark romance, and I got tired of the same heroine on repeat. I wanted to shake up the template, mostly because my craft goes stale if I don't. For me, a strong female lead has never been about who hits hardest. It's about women who understand power, who keep their agency even when it costs them, who have lived long enough to be done with being told what to want. That's why Viviana is 500, not 19. She's already paid for her power, and she isn't giving the receipt back..

Writing a Queen

Viviana started as a nod to Selene from Underworld, that cold, efficient lethality, but I needed her to feel older than a fight scene. More regal, more tired. Five hundred years does that to a person.

She is not a starry-eyed lover. She has watched empires rise and fall, and she has learned to distrust anything that looks too neat. That is why she bristles at the Hallmark-perfect town she calls home. It sells a simple kind of happy, and she stopped believing in simple a long time ago.

It is also why she keeps Andrei at a distance. Not because she is playing hard to get, but because wanting someone has always cost her, and she is still deciding if he is worth the price. Her missing piece is not innocence. It is curiosity she thought she had burned out.

That history shows up in how she moves. In combat or in a council room, she does not ask for space. She takes it, then decides if you get to stay. She is not a prize to be won. She is the queen you do not touch unless she lets you.

Viviana’s eyes narrowed as she felt his hand move to her hip. “Nah-ah-ah... Not yet. Hands to yourself, I’m still exploring.” as she moved his hand back to its former position above his head. The shadow binding them together. 

Aged to perfection

Jenny pointed it out first. In dark romance and romantasy, the heroine is almost always eighteen, fresh, and written like the story starts the day she becomes interesting. I did not want that.

Viviana is five hundred. She reads as early forties. That age is deliberate. She has lived long enough to be sharp about the world, and she is nowhere near done. It gave me a sweet spot between weight and want.

It was also personal. The woman who inspired Viviana was in her forties when I met her, and I wanted to hold that version of her on the page. Not younger, not softened. Just exactly as formidable as she was then.

Writing her that way made something obvious. There are not many women like her in this space. I liked fixing that. Age does not make her less beautiful. It is the reason she is.

If anyone recognizes herself in Viviana, I hope it is the readers who rarely get to. And yes, there is one reader in particular I wrote her for. She will know.

“I also don’t see myself the way you do Andrei, to many years on me.” She said letting out a little wry chuckle.  “The same could be said of the art we study. Age does not make it any less beautiful.” He countered. 

Why More of Us Need to Get This Right

I am not interested in writing the "Queen on the streets, you know the rest." version of a woman. That split is lazy. It gives you two costumes instead of one person, and readers feel it immediately.

When male authors lean on that trope, we are not just being boring. We are shrinking our own stories. A character who only exists to be adored in one scene and consumed in the next cannot drive a plot for five hundred years. She cannot run a city, or hate a Hallmark town for the right reasons, or tell Andrei no and make it stick. She has no past to pull from, so the writer has to keep inventing new men for her to react to.

Writing women properly is not about checking a box. It is about giving yourself better tools. A woman with power, with age, with a history she remembers, creates friction. She says no when the outline says yes. She wants things that are not about the hero. That friction is where dark romance actually gets dark, because the stakes are no longer "will they," but "what will she give up to have him, and will she decide it is worth it."

There is also a practical reason. Most of the readers in this genre are women. They have lived the difference between being looked at and being seen. If I write Viviana as a fantasy prop, I lose them on page ten. If I write her as someone who has earned her edges, they will follow her into worse places with me, because they trust her to make her own calls.

I do not think male authors need permission to write women. Though, I do ask permission of people when writing inspired characters. Consent is still key, fiction or not. What we as men do need is practice. We need to stop reaching for the split personality shortcut and start building full lives. Give her a job she is good at, a town she hates for specific reasons, a body that has aged, a desire that is hers before it is ever shared. Let her be difficult. Let her be wrong. Let her keep her agency when the bedroom door closes, not just when the streetlights are on.

That is not politics. That is craft. And it makes for better monsters, better queens, and better books.

The Point of Her

I did not build Viviana to be liked. I built her to be believed.

She is five hundred because I needed someone who remembers what power costs. She reads as forty because that is the age where a woman is often told to get quieter, and I wanted her louder. She says no to Andrei, she hates the pretty town, she takes the room instead of asking for it, because those are the choices that make her a person instead of a plot device.

Writing her that way made my job harder and my book better. She argues with my outline. She wants things that have nothing to do with romance. She carries the history I gave her, including the piece of a real woman I am lucky enough to know.

That is the work I want to keep doing. Not the split in two trope, not the eternal eighteen year old, but women who have lived, who keep their agency when it is inconvenient, who are still beautiful because of their years, not in spite of them.

If you write in this space, especially if you are a man writing women, try it. Give her the mileage. Let her be tired, let her be sharp, let her be queen on her own terms. The story will push back, and that is how you know you finally wrote someone real.