Getting into character

Simon Neil, Biffy Clyro

Ok, so having said that I like writing shorts, I am now trying to make progress on the long, the novel, the proper book. The first-person narrator is Jeremy, a normal working-class bloke who's a natural dom. I'm having to write a character profile, because I'm struggling to get into his head. I have no trouble writing from a male viewpoint, but male and straight and naturally dominant is fucking with my brain. 

So I've written him a little confessional-type history and then I thought, I could do with some visuals of what this guy looks like. Now, he can't be the besuited, billionaire business type currently beloved of erotic romance, because I can't stand a man in a suit and if I was a man I certainly wouldn't be one who dressed smartly. I'd be one who favoured jeans and t-shirts but had probably mellowed from his younger days as a messy-haired, grungy kind of dude. So I looked up some hunky rockers. And what did I find? Not one from my list of fanciables who has a dominant look in his eyes, damnit. This probably says more about my taste than it does about hunky rockers in general. But it's also useful in its own way, because, as I've probably said a million times before, I hate stereotypes. And what could be more delicious than a dominant man who's confident enough in himself to show a little vulnerability on occasion?

Anyway, here's the start of the character profile:

Jared Leto, 30 Seconds to Mars

Hi, my name’s Jeremy and I like to hurt women.

That’s how I imagine it would start, my confessional at some kind of Sadists’ Anonymous.

And how long have you had these feelings, Jeremy?

This is more like how I imagine the psychiatrist’s consultation would go. As long as I can remember, I’d say. I used to tie up my sister’s dolls and dangle them over the steam from the kettle spout by their luscious blonde hair. She had so many, she didn’t notice when I took one, stripped off its wide, pink princess dress and buried it upside down in the soil at the bottom of the garden so just its legs were sticking out. Well, its legs and bum, which was about the extent of my anatomical knowledge back then.

I vividly remember the Saturday teatime programmes in which someone was most likely to get captured and threatened with all manner of devious tortures. Only threatened, mind you, this was family viewing. I was the Sheriff of Nottingham, the bad guy who snatched Daisy Duke, Indie gone bad when he locks Willie in the cage in The Temple of Doom. I drew the line at being Jabba the Hutt...