Stupid Heroines:

       Please don't make your heroine DO STUPID THINGS FOR THE PURPOSE OF TELLING THE STORY.  I really hate STUPID HEROINES.  If something menacing happened to you and you would logically contact or go to the police, then your heroine WOULD DO THE SAME.  Just because she goes to the police doesn't mean the police have to believe her sad little tale of woe.  Or, if they do believe her, how much protection can they really offer?  Usually little to none.  Which suits our purposes as it makes her even more vulnerable to the bad guy(s), scares the reader for her and keeps that reader reading to find out what happens next.

       But if she doesn't go to the police, the reader will wonder why and
you'll have them disliking her, thinking her "TOO STUPID TO LIVE."  And that your precious book may end up a wall banger.

      I've read some otherwise great romantic suspense books that have had characters doing things no smart woman would be caught doing.  (A couple were written by men.)  In real life, women are cautious.  We're alert to dangers and strangers.  We need to be to survive in this world.  We aren't stupid.  Or foolish.

        A book I read recently had a heroine whose apartment was broken into by a man who blindfolded her, stripped her, and all but raped her.
Afterward, she changed the lock on her front door, but not the one on her
sliding glass door.  HELLO!!!!!!!!!!  Who doesn't know that a sliding glass
door is the most vulnerable one?  Who wouldn't have had that lock changed, bolts set in the top and bottom and probably a steel bar inserted in the runner?  What woman living in Los Angeles-which the character was-wouldn't already have had those safety precautions?  And what woman would ever feel safe in that apartment again?  Not me, that's for sure.

          If your heroine must live in a dangerous part of town for your
story purposes, then don't have her quirky personality trait be to leave her windows and doors unlocked, even though she's on the second or third floor. (Yes, I read that in a book by a best selling romantic suspense author)

          Instead, make that bad guy get into her apartment despite her
safeguards.  "THAT" is scarier.  The author with the glass door scenario
later in the book had the bad guy watching another  woman's house and saying to himself that he could see 17 ways in from where he stood.  17 ways.  Now THAT is scary.  And it teaches us something.  The smarter your heroine is and the more logically she behaves and the harder she works at keeping herself safe, the more frightening it will be that none of her safeguards work to protect her.  The reason this is so scary is because it shows us all our own vulnerabilities and it touches on all of our deepest fears.