I discovered today that my male main characters (MMCs) are cinnamon rolls.

If you aren't familiar with romance tropes, which I only vaguely was before a conversation today with an author friend: They are kind, supportive, and good with their emotions. They can have layers to their personalities, and they aren't push-overs, but they tend to be what I would have classified as "just good people" before today.

We were talking about the MMC for my upcoming book, which is untitled, and how I was struggling with categorizing him when I was searching for things that would be appropriate for his personality, like what kind of coffee he would drink. Basically, think of it like one of those personality quizzes, where you see what sort of animal you are, what dessert you are, or which Hogwarts house you would be sorted into. Except, I'm using this research for shaping him in the book.

My MMC, Beau, isn't a doormat, per se, but his kindness and devotion have been taken advantage of in the past. And that wasn't appreciated by his significant other. She saw it as a sign that he was a doormat, when really it was his devotion to those he was helping combined with youth that prevented him from having good boundaries. After a while, she couldn't deal with the lack of boundaries anymore and left, but she was young, too, and wasn't sure what else to do.

When he shows up with both maturity and the ability to tune into others' feelings in this book years later, it's a winning combination. He's masculine without being toxic, but also supportive without losing himself.

So I thought about why I want to write characters like this so often, since I just did it in the first three books of the Soul Sisterhood series and started doing it in the fourth one. No, I don't believe that every MMC should be like Kristoff in Frozen, but for books that feature a woman working through her past and only have a minor storyline of romance, you don't get enough shaping of the male's character to really create him as something other than a supportive good guy. The main action in my books is her transformation, and sometimes, it's nice to have a lot of help getting out of the coccoon, so the best friend and the love interest both serve that purpose.

Looking back on my MMC's, Adrian (Braving the Shore) and Logan (The Treasures We Seek) have really minor roles in the action. They both appear minimally in the text, and you don't get much of their feelings or back story. Logan demonstrates his cinnamon roll-ness when he creates a dessert that Kenzi can safely eat, since she has celiac's disease, which is something that a lot of people don't bother with (personal experience). Colin (Good in Theory) has a bigger role in the story and is someone Lacey confides in and has deeper conversations with. We see their story grow more in that book, but ultimately, he is still a cinnamon roll, just a solid, kind person with her best interests at heart. And Beau (next book, untitled), is shaping up to be the same way.

I read a bit about cinnamon rolls before writing this because I wanted to make sure I was speaking correctly about the archetype, and I came across this really thought-provoking article by Jenny Maloney about the rise of cinnamon rolls (ha!) in post-Covid literature, which led me down an entirely new rabbit hole inside my head. This is what I realized: When I look at used books in a store, I see the cover, then read the back, then check the copyright year. The books pass my test in that order. I knew I preferred more recent reads because of the way the stories were shaped, but I didn't even think about the fact that I preferred the male leads in these. I wonder if their cinnamon roll-ness is why.

Maybe they remind me of my own cinnamon roll husband, who, by the way, used to hunt through tiny gluten-free sections in grocery stores when we were dating in 2009 and 2010 to find things I could eat. After almost fourteen years of marriage, he still does, as evidenced by the box of gluten- and dairy-free mac he brought home triumphantly the other day, which I didn't ask for. He just knew it would be nice.

And I hope my daughters find themselves some cinnamon rolls when they are old enough, too! Like in their thirties, when they are allowed to date. 😉