If you would write a memorable male hero, mind my words.

Let him not speak.

Write him down his way -- without tears, shrieks, cries, thoughts but allow occasional grunts. Give him a last name. He may once have had a first name; but he has forgotten it. Do not make his last name or Allegro. It must be a name that sounds like a rock: Munch. Crunch. Click. Roak. Deck. Stone. McDeck. McRoak. Jones.

If he is an immigrant, call him O'Declan.

If you wish to be a famous writer, beloved of critics, when McStone does speak, do not use quotation marks. Famous creators of male characters shun quotation marks. They shun all expression of emotion or even sensation.

If your character cuts off two fingers with a mitre saw, have him blink and wrap the gushing stumps in a (dirty) rag.

Never use the word "feel" in connection with a male character. "Think" is permissible but not favored. A little, tiny boy character may feel -- but only rage, premature sexual urgings or abandonment. Happiness and love are outside the octave.

Successful male characters in fiction are not fulfilled or joyful. Ever. They may have some kind of pleasurable reaction during combat or orgasm -- and these activities should be roughly similar.

George Bailey was a wimp, as was King Arthur and Atticus Finch. They spoke, suffered and felt fear. They yearned. Real men don't yearn. If they do yearn, they don't know it. Hamlet was a wimp. Oedipus was not. When he got upset, he poked out his own eyes and winced./

A successful male character will not experience fear -- anymore than regret or happiness. He may experience desperation, usually having to do with how to survive a war or get out of a longterm relationship with a woman - and these activities should be roughly equivalent.

A real may must hate his father and be disgusted by his mother.

A real man (in fiction) must be possessed of a positive genius for misunderstanding his child.

A successful male character must be able to walk away from the great love of his life (or his child, his mother, anyone but his comrade in war) while his mind screams to him that he is making an irredeemable mistake. But he must never acknowledge this, especially to himself.

He must face death nonchalantly -- his own and that of others -- although be very serious and avid about money, cards, espionage, fishing or even golf. He must eagerly engage in physical fights, of the schoolyard variety.

If you must choose between two behaviors for your successful male character, choose the one most emphatically self-destructive. Make his response to death, intrigue, loss, castration, blindness, mass destruction, fraternal suicide or deportation the over-use of any kind of liquor -- except wine or (God forbid!) champagne. He must drink too much without ice and, if possible, without a glass.

If he sees his best friend blown to bits four feet from him, let him eat a hard-boiled egg. He must not speak or grieve openly -- or grieve at all, except perhaps a quarter century later, and then only through hard drinking or suicide (activities that should be roughly equivalent).

Let him make a climactic statement at the end of whatever you are writing. But not with punctuation! And not with contractions.

Great literature was never written by using the words "don't" or "can't." Everyone in the story (or novel) must sound as though he has stepped from the pages of a Civil War diary. (Charles Portis, the author of 'True Grit,' also used formal and archaic speech; but he WAS writing about a period shortly after the Civil War, and also is a genius.)

Make your modern hero say something not unlike this: It is all right. They are all whores. Or..You cannot expect a woman to know this. (This may veer dangerously close to emotion, so beware.) Capitalization is iffy as well.

When you need an ending, try this: Describe a broken and barren landscape. Make the only color a splash of blood, not RED blood (too vivid and likely to provoke emotion) but dark brown, with a thatch of hair embedded in it.

mcquade looked down at the pool of dried blood and noticed that the strands of hair in it were blond and those of a child and they were hairs belonging to his infant son mcquade did not know where his son's body was the wilderness was vast and the wilderness was brittle

it is better to have no expectations, mcquade said

he peeled and ate his boiled egg there was no salt he found a packet of pepper and ripped it open with his teeth the pepper was old and smelled of paper

THE END.

Jackie M.