*pulls out credit card*

What did you guys think of the smart/sexy guy? Have you thought of some characters who fit the bill? I keep finding them, especially since I wrote the post about him. But I’ve found even more of this guy, who we’re about to talk about. Sheesh, seriously, I see him everywhere now.

You’ll know a few off the top of your heads, I’m sure.

The Guy Who has it All

Know who I’m talking about? The first ones that come to mind are comic book characters, if I’m being honest. And I think that might have been where the cliché really grew in popularity, but at this point, he’s just getting so overused and overdone.

Who is he, you ask?

Well, he’s just what it sounds like he is. He’s the man who literally has everything. He’s the rich guy who no one ever says no to, the guy no one can refuse because he literally has everything, and if he doesn’t have it, he’s going to get it. Oh, and most of the time he's also very attractive. Very.

Think of him like Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne. They have everything, to the point that you wouldn’t even know what to get them for Christmas, and they can’t possibly keep a girlfriend because they have such a dependency on their stuff that they don’t know what to do with anything else. (Yeah, I just said that about Bruce and Tony.)

He’s a problem character, if you ask me, and one that’s very overdone, these days.

So let’s look at how we can tell, if our characters are too much like the cliché:

Why should we read him?

What’s his purpose in life?

What is his draw, for the reader?

Again, as always, he really has to have a reason for being the way he is. There needs to be something that redeems him, something that makes him real. Because as he is, he’s not very realistic. He just isn’t.

I know, I know, there are rich people out there. But we can’t all be writing about them now, can we? And we really shouldn’t. Because there are so many of the Guy-Who-has-it-All out there, he’s getting a little old to most readers. We all know Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne. We know the type. We know what he's about. And that makes him a little boring.

So if you’re going to use him, you need to have something about him that makes him utterly unique, that makes him different from all the others of his type, and something that will make your readers actually want to read him.

And that’s really hard to do, which is why I don’t recommend writing him at all. 

Fortunately for you, next week I have someone else to tell you about, someone who'll be much better for you in the long run. 

[love]

{Rani Divine}