: 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

@Rivera824

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If you want something realistic, look up real life situations of people who have Dissociative Identity Disorder.

People who hear voices (auditory hallucinations) tend to hear those voices as being spoken by people next to them (or further away), but people with DID hear the voices inside of them. Those voices can have a distinct sound and accent. Some of those voices can 'start speaking' because of something that happens in real life. The voices can be comforting (if the person is feeling scared, they may try to calm the person) or cause anxiety (they can accuse the person of doing something wrong).

At times, people with DID can feel as if they are puppets doing what these other people inside them want them to do. Other times, they simply have memory blanks when another personality came to the fore.

Keep in mind that, in real life, DID is caused by deep trauma, usually at young ages. Sometimes, people can have one alternate personality or more than twenty.

Still, if you want to know what it's like to live with a different personality inside of you, read some real life accounts.

EDIT

As @Kirk mentioned in the comment, mental illnesses are real and painful.

Learning about the pain and difficulties someone with a mental illness faces should first and foremost help us to develop respect for everyone with that difficulty. That does not mean we cannot learn from them and become better writers (and perhaps better people, too).

Understanding our difficulties and problems makes a writer able to create more humane characters. Understanding the difficulties and problems of others can do the same.

But there must be respect.

And respect means admitting that, unless one has personal contact with a mental illness for long enough (personally, professionally or through a loved one), one cannot fully grasp all its intrincancies. One can simply glimpse in and get a feeling for what it's like.

And sometimes, even when you honestly want to understand, you simply fail to do so. And that's ok. For as long as you don't claim to know the answers, that is.

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