: Handling an Inauthentic Character One of my main writing projects centers around a character rich with vices. Probably chief among them is self-interest, followed by dishonesty. When I say dishonesty,

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To a large extent, whether a character is plausible or implausible depends on how well you justify it in the story. I've often read stories where I find myself saying, "Oh come on! Why would he do that?!"

It occurs to me that the more common problem in fiction is that characters are too simple rather than too complicated. I've read lots of stories where I say, "Oh brother, you can describe every character in this story completely with one sentence. He's the 'idealistic young man who can't deal with practical realities', or 'the villain who will stop at nothing in his pursuit of power', or 'the young woman who constantly puts herself in danger for no apparent reason and has to be repeatedly rescued by the hero', etc."

Depending on the nature of the story and how central this character is, you may be able to justify her behavior with two sentences of explanation, or the whole point of the story could be to explain how she came to be this way. As long as you give SOME explanation, and it's at least reasonably plausible. Like, don't just say "because she had a rough childhood" or "because she's crazy". But if you briefly said that, say, when she was a young woman she wanted to do X, and she lived in an environment where everyone around her hated X, and so she had to put on a façade her whole life, and she became accustomed to telling others what they wanted to hear and hiding her true feelings and so .... That might be enough to make me believe it.

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If "the humble, virtuous identity is not less or more authentic than the grandiose, power-grabbing one that replaces it," then both those (apparently contradictory) sets of characteristics exist in the same person.

You have to figure out how that's possible. Her backstory is critical to that. Did she grow up as the child of a monastery's charwoman? Was the monastery headed by a Cardinal Richelieu type? Was the monastery run by kind, humble monks who were eventually destroyed by a powerful political leader who adopted her as heir?

I'm just riffing here, but my point is the same as SF's: for one person to hold such contradictory personalities but have them both be authentic, she has to have had a complex life. Whether the change is caused by internal or external factors, you as the author must account for it.

My feeling as a reader is that if I can't understand why she can be Polly Pure and then flip over to Killer Katrine with a sidebar of Emo Emily along the way, I'm going to think that you as the writer don't know what you're doing, and I'll abandon the story.

Other things you have to think about while you're constructing this backstory:

If her Polly Pure self is authentic, but she takes on multiple other
personae to hide her past, does she hate that Polly Pure self? Does
she look back on her innocent past with contempt?
Does she keep changing personae for other people (that is, so they
don't know who she is) or for herself (because she can't stand to
look at herself in the mirror any more)?
Who is she protecting with the constant changes? Whose past is she trying to conceal? Could she be trying to keep her past secret because revealing it would reveal someone else's past or secret?
Could she have multiple personality disorder? (you just don't see enough of this in fiction, AFAIC.)
What is the reader supposed to think of her various personae? Are we supposed to like them all? Sympathize with them? Is there a persona we shouldn't like? feel sorry for?

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I don't think any character is ever too complicated. Some may be alienating to more "mainstream" readers, but that only means you shift your target audience to more ambitious readers.

Then, of course, everything happens for some reason. The character being that way is a result of a certain backstory. That backstory must exist, and be consistent.

Now, whether the backstory exists locked forever in your drawer, is merely hinted in the book, or just revealed through some confession or reminiscence, is your decision. In case of a character so complex, personally I'd choose to drip small hints along the way, building the complete backstory as the book goes - it's something that has enough flavor to keep the reader's curiosity piqued, keep them wanting more.

Not giving out the backstory would be a waste - because backstory of a character so complex is bound to be interesting. Still, even if you decide to keep it hidden, keep it fleshed out - YOU need to know what makes the character tick, what fears, motivations, disappointments, dreams, vengeance twisted a person's personality that far. If you skip it, you'll have a much harder time fleshing out the character and keeping the motivations consistent.

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