The Saint of Heartbreak by Morgan Dante
Understanding what your story is, is hard. Understanding who’s story you are telling (especially in a romance where both characters feel equally important to you) is extra hard.
This is a book that fails because it doesn’t know who’s story it is trying to tell.
Let me explain:
The Theory
Story isn’t plot, it isn’t about what happens. I think of it as being the emotional arc. The protagonist starts in an emotional space, with a particular view of himself, the situation or the world. By the end of the book, after all the plot has happened to him, he needs to have had a change of heart that has shifted him into a new perspective. That’s what a story is.
In a romance, this happens to both of them. In the best romances the very act of meeting the other person profoundly changes both characters. It is, in effect, the inciting action for each character’s arc.
Once you know what your arcs are, you can then you can consider your POVs (point of view). The choice of POV puts your reader in a ride-a-long position in a particular character’s head, limiting the parts of the story they can experience. Also, the POV character is who they are going to connect and sympathise with, so it’s a key consideration.
So which one should you choose?
There are no easy answers for this. But consider their respective arcs – which one holds more emotional weight? That’s your POV character, your protagonist.
BUT, sometimes everything in your gut screams that you don’t want to be in that person’s head. That the best way to tell their story is through an outsider’s observations. I know this feeling, it tends to be how I look at many of my own characters. And it’s fine, it’s your story after all. But it now it becomes essential to re-look at you POV character.
They cant simply be an observer – in the observation they too have to be changed, and that change needs to feel just as weighted.
The other key point I want to emphasise with regards to arc, is that people change gradually and in reaction to outside forces. From an author’s perspective that means you need things to happen to your characters that challenge them, and you need to show incremental changes in their behaviour or perspective as the story evolves. Now I’m not saying you need big action in your story, but the characters cant go from zero to transformed. And if there is no plot your readers will get bored. There must be actions that drive dramatic tension.
Test Case
Unfortunately, this book is all vibes and no structure. Which is actually a characteristic of the author’s work (I didn’t realise until I scanned through the backlist at the end, but I have read one of their books before (Providence girls) – which was so forgettable I didn’t even recognise the author’s rather unique name).
Okay, let me talk you through what the story wanted to be, before we explore were it went wrong.
The premise is, what if Judas of the last supper goes to Hell for betraying Christ, and Lucifer falls in love with him. But the author goes even further by asking, what if both of these men have been sexually assaulted and are severely traumatised. So that this book becomes an exploration of survival and recovery as well as a sweet, dark romance.
The book does a really good job of exploring the trauma. For me the experience of a victim initiating or engaging in sexual behaviour in order to self-punish or invoke a dissociative episode was absolutely heart-rending.
But the book fails to deliver on either story or plot. In 2000 years, basically all of three impactful things happen. That is not enough plot for a book of this length, or a character arc of this complexity. And I get it, that was what this version of Hell was supposed to be about. But books need plot. Things need to happen to invoke responses in character. I think, perhaps, what this author failed to realise is that drama isn’t the same as action (which is something my writing teachers often try to infuse their students with). The plot doesn’t have to be full of big events, but it does need small ones that affect the protagonist, that challenges them towards change. An off-hand comment can do it, when delivered by the right person at the right time.
And, in part because of this, it also fails to deliver on the character arcs. Judas comes into Hell, still fresh off his sexual trauma. Reeling with guilt at betraying Christ, and deeply hurt at the way Christ has abandoned him. He trusts no one. He indulges in self-destructive behaviour. He is a hot mess of a person. But by the end of the book we have a person with a network of friends, who has learned to trust. Who has a lover (beloved), and has taken ownership and pleasure in his body. A person who has let go of his unhealthy attachment to Christ and accepted why he made the choices he did. If not whole he is at least on this side of well-adjusted. That’s a pretty good arc, no? In fact Judas’ journey represents the thematic drive of the whole book.
Whereas Lucifer…I’m honestly not sure what this character’s arc was ment to be. He has already ‘recovered’ from his sexual trauma before he meets Judas, he has his own network of friends and lovers (who get painfully little page time in this story). He does not stew in guilt over dragging his friends to Hell, but has accepted they each made their own decision, and he rightly blames the angels who hurt them for the damage rather than himself. He does struggle with trust and self-loathing, but I don’t feel like this is worse than any of the rest of us are dealing with. He is confident in his power. Basically he’s as well adjusted as any of us, if a little lonely (which is something we could also dig into given he has two lovers we are told he is deeply attached to – not that you can tell from their positioning in this story). The implications seem to be he needs someone to love. (Which again begs an examination of the importance of romantic love and the idea a human can’t be whole without – but lets park that for some other time). Really, the only thing that has changed come the end of the book, is that Lucifer has fallen in love, so now the ennui of his existence will be relieved. Picture me rolling my eyes. he stays exactly the same right until the last scene, when the I love you’s happen, then suddenly he is a different man. It just doesn’t deliver on a story arc. We need to see him changed step by step over the course of the story.
Okay. You may be thinking, only one meaningful arc but that’s not the biggest issue in the world, surely? Except for one small problem, this story is told in Lucifer’s POV. And Lucifer is an perceptive as a rock.
For example, he doesn’t realise that Judas is traumatised when he first seduces him, only realising later, after finding him in a dissociative episode. And that is a perfectly human response, I’m not critiquing that. But Lucifer never gets better at it. He’s supposed to be our observer of the enigmatic Judas, but he doesn’t see him, he doesn’t watch him. Instead, in the last chapter, we see Lucifer ask when Judas’ attitude starts to change and gets it explained to him. That’s not satisfying or convincing – we needed to experience that transition with him, that realisation that he was loved and valued.
Remedial Action
There are two major problems with this book. Firstly, the POV character does not have an arc. Now the obviously fix for this, and probably what any sane editor would have recommended, was that the story should have been told from Judas’ perspective, given that his journey represents the thematic drive of the whole book.
The thing is, I get why the author didn’t want to do that, sometimes its too difficult to stay with the POV of a traumatised victim. Sometimes the allure of a character is in their enigmatic nature (I’m looking at you Captive Prince). The whole book gains mystery in having that outsider’s perspective, trying to understand that person’s complexities. But in that case your viewpoint character needs to have his own arc that meshes, that’s just as strong. This book fails to deliver on that.
The other problem is that the perspective character DOESNT SEE THE CHANGES HAPPENING. Which means that the reader doesn’t see the changes happening. Remember when I talked about evidence and conclusions and the scientific method? Here is another example in real time. If you have to tell the reader that your character is changed, then you failed to do the work of changing the character. You need to make sure the steps are seen, even if the character doesn’t realise their importance, otherwise the change looses its impact and feels manufactured.
So always remember, primary characters need to have arcs. Perspective characters need to have arcs. The emotional journey happens in baby steps, you need to show a gradual change. And always consider which arc is the most emotionally weighted.
