Guest Post: Ex Ethics by Emma Barry

Posted May 16, 2023 by Alana in Bookish, Features/Spotlights/Excerpts / 0 Comments

Guest Post Ex Ethics by Emma Barry

Today, I’m excited to share a guest post from Emma Barry! Before we get to her take on ex’s in romance, let me share some info on her new release, Funny Guy!

Funny Guy by Emma Barry
Funny Guy by Emma Barry
Published by Amazon Publishing on May 16, 2023
Genres: Contemporary, Fiction / Romance / Contemporary
Pages: 277

From the author of Chick Magnet comes a heartfelt friends-to-lovers story about what can happen when a funny guy and his childhood best friend are stuck together in a small New York City apartment.

Sam can't escape the smash hit "Lost Boy" because, well, he is the lost boy. His pop-singer ex immortalized him in a song about his childish ways, and now his comedy career is on the line.

At least he still has Bree, his best friend and confidante. Bree has always been there for Sam, but she's never revealed her biggest secret: she's in love with him. To help herself move on, Bree applies for her dream job across the country--and doesn't say a thing to Sam.
But as Sam tries to resuscitate his career, he turns to Bree for support--and maybe more. In the confines of her tiny apartment, they share a different dynamic. A charged dynamic. But she's his friend. He can't be falling for her.

Except he is.

Are his feelings for Bree just funny business? Or is their smoldering attraction the real deal?

Ex Ethics

Is anyone treated worse in romance than the main characters’ exes? Heck, some villains have entire fan clubs, and villain redemption arcs are common in long series. But exes are an entirely other matter. They’re often treated as obstacles to the couple getting (or staying) together or as the source of the emotional wounds that mark romancelandia’s protagonists.

And look, I get it. They’re your character’s ex for a reason. But in real life, if you met someone who couldn’t wait to recite a 500-stanza epic ballad about their evil exes, you’d probably be looking for the nearest exit to escape this sentient red flag.

The truth of the matter is if you’re writing about adults in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, they probably have a romantic past. And if the default mode is for those exes to be uniformly terrible, that strikes me as, at best, cliché, if not outright problematic.

For that reason, I’m careful about how I write my protagonists’ exes. Mostly, I gave them boring past relationships. Their exes weren’t bad people, they just weren’t the right ones. Or the timing was off: the protagonist wasn’t ready to fall and stay in love until now. Often, I lay the blame for the previous break ups at the feet of the protagonist, as it can be a way to show growth in their character. 

You do have to be careful to avoid saying this time, it’s different because the love interest is “not like other girls/guys/folks.” But that’s even more reason to write the exes carefully. If everyone in the book is complex, if they aren’t pitted against each other in some kind of reductive competition, then you’re probably breaking the mold.

Having said all that, I have sometimes written terrible previous lovers. In Chick Magnet, I gave Nicole an absolutely awful ex—and he isn’t a garden variety meanie either. No, he’s an outright narcissist, and much of Nic’s arc is about learning to trust herself again.

But since I had just taken a trip on the jerk ex expressway, I was absolutely determined not to write an evil ex in Funny Guy. The inciting incident of this book is that successful sketch comedian Sam’s ex, the pop singer Salem, has written a hit song about all his flaws; think Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” or “Dear John,” or The Chicks’ “Gaslighter.” To get away from the resulting media attention, Sam hides out at the apartment of his childhood best friend, Bree…who happens to be in love with him.

It would’ve been easy—and expected—to write Salem as the petulant other woman. But it was clear to me that she’s a great person who isn’t right for Sam because he’s already in love with Bree (he doesn’t think he’s worthy of her yet). One of my favorite scenes in the book has Salem tell Bree that his relationships fail because he can’t face the feelings that are obvious to everyone except for these two bozos.

Because what could be more quintessentially romance than that?

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Be sure to check out Funny Guy, out TODAY!

About Emma Barry

Emma Barry is a teacher, novelist, recovering academic, and former political staffer. She lives with her high school sweetheart and a menagerie of pets and children in Virginia, and she occasionally finds time to read and write.