Fitzwilliam Darcy
Thor
Two great swoon-worthy heroes, and who doesn’t love a swoon-worthy hero? As a writer, I strive to make my heroes the type that makes you swoon despite their flaws.
After learning the devastating truth, that my hero was a girly-man, I sought out to learn how to better craft the male POV in my writing. This sent me on a hunt through dozens of articles written by men, women, published authors, and editors to discover what makes a realistic male POV.
Last week I shared what I learned about male dialogue and conversations. Today I am wrapping up with bulleted lists on what I discovered about the male’s inner world.
The Inner Male
- Short snippets of inner monologue are best. One or two sentences is a good target.
- A man always thinks of himself in positive terms, even when he botches things terribly. He will phrase his defeat in terms that make it clear that he was put in an impossible situation or that he was off his game. (Of course, you can still have characters who struggle with self-image, but even then they can still have times of thinking like this.)
- A man would never describe himself as helpless. EVER. He may be down for a time while he waits for the next opportune moment, but he is not helpless.
- When a man sets his mind on a target, everything else vanishes from thought until the mission is accomplished.
- Men aren’t going to agonize over whether or not they should kiss the woman, they do it, then deal with the consequences afterward. Teenage guys might naturally agonize, though.
- Men are very visual. The way a woman dresses creates visual images a man’s brain that can linger for days, months, or even years.
- For every problem, there is a solution, but the consequences don’t matter as much as simply solving the issue to begin with. They may just try the direct, brute-force way first.
- Emotion, except for anger, is usually kept under wraps or repressed altogether.
- They think about responsibilities, deadlines, family, life, and sometimes there is literally nothing. (Is that seriously possible? I can’t even wrap my head around thinking nothing.)
- Most guys like to imagine they don’t have feelings. They use the ‘push it deep down’ approach 90% of the time and the remaining 10% of the time, it is bottled up until it eventually bursts.
- If you push a guy, he’ll get angry; if you break a guy, he’ll cry.
- Guys understand a woman’s emotions; they just don’t know what to do about it.
- Most guys only know eleven colors: red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, black, brown, gray, white, and pink.
- Guys do NOT always think about sex. If they do, they are not the type of guy you want being your hero. Real men can and do think about other things.
What do you think? Are there any things that could be added to this list? Any things which should be removed? Leave your comments below and come back next week for my final installment with Male Behavior.
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