When reading a romance novel, the hero and the heroine should both be appealing characters. They don’t have to be perfect, but they need to be identifiable. This means that the readers should be able to relate in some way to at least one of the main characters. If they don't, then why should they care what happens to them? The answer is: they won’t.
What is TSTL?
The damsel in distress angle can be overused in romance, and it often is. There are some novels that can frustrate the reader so much that they want to throw the book against the wall. “That girl is just too stupid to live.” The phrase has grown and now has its own acronym: TSTL. There are many sites online that discuss this sprouting phenomenon. All About Love is one such site, and here is a quote:
"But when a character behaves in a way that doesn’t make sense, or is inconsistent or just plain stupid, the story dies for the reader, to the point where they might just put the book down, never to pick it up again. Or alternatively throw it against a wall.”
I'm too Stupid to Help Myself
Yes, it’s exciting for the hero to rescue the damsel, but that shouldn’t automatically mean that she did something stupid or irrational to get herself into trouble. If the reader is rolling her eyes and is tempted to toss the book due to this stupidity, the author has failed in her job to entertain.
Here is a popular author’s viewpoint on TSTL. Teresa Medeiros apparently can’t stand the expression. She takes personal offense, since she feels she is too stupid to live (she says as much in the blog). Her opinion is that if the damsel is not made stupid, she’s too perfect and would make the story too predictable and boring. Here is a quote:
“If we avoid all of these things, then eventually we won’t have anything to write about except perfect (and boring) characters and the romance genre will grow even narrower in scope as a consequence.”
An Author is Not Her Heroine!
Ms. Medeiros must have forgotten that a review of her character’s stupidity has nothing to do with how smart she herself is. Her writing is usually brilliant, so there is no reason for her to think she has to make the heroine a dimwit to further her plot line. It is doubtful that making the damsel a little brighter while she is crying for the hero to rescue her will hurt the romance genre. It is actually a bit of an insult to women in general that they must be stupid in order to need rescuing.
To take another side of TSTL, it’s not always about rescuing. The heroine can sometimes get herself into trouble by making incredibly stupid decisions. Ms. Medeiros might have written her blog after receiving some negative feedback from her current book, Some Like it Wild. To paraphrase the beginning of that novel, Pamela, while attempting to kidnap a highwayman, holds him hostage with her gun (found later to be fake).
She doesn’t know where any lodgings are, but the hero offers to lead her to one nearby. She agrees to follow him along rocky terrain that seems to be miles long (uh, didn't he say it was nearby?). Never once does it occur to this girl that she could be walking into a trap? She continues to follow even when he leads her down a dark staircase that goes underground. Any intelligent woman would be holding up her hands and saying, “No way,” but she follows. Of course it is a trap, which anyone with a modicum of smarts would see coming a mile away.
Book Hurling is Very Therapeutic
That is a very good example of a character who is too stupid to live. If that had happened in real life, she would have ended up robbed, raped and possibly killed. This is a love story though, so that can’t happen…but does that mean willing suspension of disbelief should be stretched that far?
Most readers certainly don’t think so, and they shouldn’t have to. So the next time an author thinks about making her heroine TSTL, maybe she should think twice. No one wants to hurl a book across the room because she can’t relate to an impossibly stupid woman.
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