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Topic : Re: how can I showcase the internal struggles between a man and his demons? The character in this story is a human-demon hybrid. He is good natured on a normal day, but because of the demon genes - selfpublishingguru.com

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Any answer involving demonic mumbo jumbo isn't useful to others, so I'm not going to bother with it. It's also not super relevant; take the lessons below and extend them as you need to.

Vanilla Answer - conflict

Put your characters into positions where primary desires that define who they are in conflict with each other. All you need to do to show that your character is in conflict is to make sure the stakes are high enough and understood by the reader; that the reader understands there is a dilemma, cares about the result, and is not certain what the outcome will be.

Vanilla Answer - internal struggle

The only way for a reader to understand struggle exists is to have enough time with a character to understand there's a struggle. That means there needs to be a story telling element that elucidates a moment where that character struggled to make a choice and ultimately made one and then perhaps didn't like the outcome. This is basically a try-fail cycle where even victories are failures. Did they get what they want? Yes, but ; no and . Core story building stuff.

This becomes easier the closer the point of view moves to the character. 1st person, your character is your narrator they will just tell us when they are struggling to decide what to do; at that point its merely a plotting move to put them into position where their primary motivations and moral facets come into conflict with each other. You'll also have more opportunities for the conflict to matter because if it's omnipresent it might affect even mundane decisions. This is the space where this kind of character excels. And if they are doing the narration you can really show it off by making them lie in ways that the reader knows are lies. Untrusty narrators are cool, but hard to write; the kind of person you are writing about is likely to dissemble and lie to himself, and also a reader, about who and what he is.

As you move out towards 3rd person limited, it becomes harder because you distance the reader from the character. This lessens the sympathy readers will feel (if you don't really step up your narration and focus on the little minute details that make people people; these foibles come out naturally in 1st). Out here, you need explicit examples; scenes where the internal conflict is the point; and if it's not the primary character you may need to resort to "the conversation" where you directly confront the character or they are left with no choice but to spill the beans. Or someone exposits what they believe is going on and maybe that's what's going on or it's just like their opinion, man. In this space, we're less sure of things.

And then you get to 3rd person omnicient, which is hardest to write but gives you the ability to characterize everyone. Here, you'd literally just (with great skill) spell out the conflicts like you would in first person, but it might be disassociative for the reader or slow down the pace more than you'd like.

Internal struggle formula

Character wants A

Character wants B

C happens, character can't have both A & B

Reader understands the costs of choosing A/B (Stakes exist!)

Character chooses something A, B or D and lives with the consequences (generally they escalate)

Repeat until you conclude and character has picked the thing the story needed them to pick once and for all.

If your story literally makes all of these points, stakes, & results clear and a reader feels them, then you've succeeded. How to write them is as varied as the number of successful works of literature. What is something you need to figure out.


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