: Re: How do I better handle my nameless main character when trying to retain mystery? I have written a short story, and the main character is referred to as "he" right the way through

@Murray831

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Fun fact: even "The Man With No Name" (Clint Eastwood's character in Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy of classic spaghetti Westerns) had a name. Several, in fact!

Your reader needs a mental handle by which they can "grab onto" a character as they think about your story. A name is a useful way of providing that, even if it's just a nickname. This is such a big deal that if you don't provide one the reader will insist on making one up for themselves, based on some character trait or quirk of behavior or whatever other hook they can find to hang it on, no matter how farfetched.

An example of this: in both Chuck Palahniuk's novel Fight Club and the film adaptation of it, the main character (Ed Norton in the movie) is never explicitly named. But readers of the novel consistently refer to him as "Joe," because of lines like "I am Joe's complete lack of surprise" in his interior dialogue (the conversations he has in his head). "Joe" has nothing to do with his actual name -- it's a parody of the style of old Reader's Digest stories -- but readers latch onto it desperately as a way to identify the character. In the film, the screenwriters changed "Joe" to "Jack," and so people who know the story from the film call the character "Jack."

For this reason I would suggest that, if the "no-name" approach is difficult even for a writer as good as Palahniuk to pull off, you're probably best served by just ditching it and finding other ways to suggest mystery. What does this man do? Where does he come from? Why is he the way he is? These are all more interesting questions than what his name is.

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