SYFY's New Original TV series, Haven (photo from SYFY website)

As a fan of weird stuff, I am really liking the new SYFY series Haven. And, as a writer in the middle of writing the first of a paranormal romance trilogy, I love it! The storyline is fairly typical: smart and beautiful heroine gets a choice between straight arrow and good-looking hero or smokin’ hot bad boy with redeeming qualities. To keep this storyline from being boring, SYFY has based their new series on The Colorado Kid, a novella by the always weird, but amazingly talented Stephen King. I doubt if either SYFY or Stephen King intended their works to be romance stories, but every good story has a romance element in it.

FBI Agent Audrey Parker, played by Emily Rose (photo from SYFY website)

Our heroine in Haven is FBI agent Audrey Parker, played by Emily Rose. Agent Parker already has a reputation for seeing the paranormal in her cases. She is sent to Haven to catch an escaped prisoner and stays after being caught up in the unusual circumstances of his death. Each episode sees Audrey thrown into the company of two of Haven’s most handsome residents.

Nathan Wournos, played by Lucas Bryant (photo from SYFY website)

Agent Parker first encounters local cop and story hero Nathan Wournos, played by Lucas Bryant,within minutes of the opening of the first episode. Nathan has all the trappings of the perfect hero. He is the strong silent type with a secret he tries to hide, but has revealed quickly in the first episode. His perceived weakness doesn’t make him any less attractive. In fact, it makes him a bit more fascinating than he would be if he were a too-perfect hero type.

Duke Crocker, played by Eric Balfour (photo from SYFY website)

The bad boy of Haven is Duke Crocker, played by smokin’ hot Eric Balfour. Supposedly a black marketeer, Duke is seriously disliked by Nathan and really doesn’t like to talk to cops–until Audrey falls at his feet…well sort of. She is knocked unconscious by an electrical box explosion and falls into the water near his boat. She wakes up naked in his bed. When she finds him reading a newspaper on the deck of his boat, she is dressed only in his chambray shirt and her service revolver. He responds to her accusation, “You took my clothes,” with a knockout grin and, “Good morning.” This is the delicious beginning to a series full of sexual tension.

As romance writers, sexual tension is what we are looking for. We want our readers to be drawn into the relationships of our heroine and her male counterparts. Usually readers pull for the hero to “get the girl.” With the addition of a bad boy with redeeming qualities, readers find themselves rooting for him too, particularly if the interaction between them heats up and makes us want to be in her shoes. (And with Eric’s killer smile, how can we not want that?!)  A storyline where the choice is unclear till the very end will bring readers back to the next book, or in this case, episode.

Our task is to write characters as appealing as Nathan and Duke, making them work as hero and bad boy as well as Lucas and Eric play them. Writing Challenge: Watch a few episodes of Haven…you can see them on SYFY.com. Take notes on what makes these characters so attractive (other than the obvious) and tell what makes their scenes with Audrey work so well. Let me know what you come up with, if you like.

PS: I almost always pull for the smokin’ hot bad boy! ;p