: Re: 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,

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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: No, you can only do that if you're making some sort of break or shift in narrative style. If the story switches to a dream, for instance, or if the characters enter a Fae realm or another

@Debbie451

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: If you can't boil down your novel into a logline (or "elevator pitch," which is how I learned it), then you may actually have a problem with your novel. You've provided the structure of

@Debbie451

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: "Literary criticism" and "editing feedback" are two entirely different beasts. Litcrit is about looking at an existing text and analyzing it. You look at the author's intent, you look at symbolism,

@Debbie451

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: In narration, stay in one tense. "She had green eyes" is fine, because your entire story is in the past tense — the "present-past," if that makes sense. If she had green eyes as a

: Re: 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,

More posts by @Debbie451

: No, you can only do that if you're making some sort of break or shift in narrative style. If the story switches to a dream, for instance, or if the characters enter a Fae realm or another

: If you can't boil down your novel into a logline (or "elevator pitch," which is how I learned it), then you may actually have a problem with your novel. You've provided the structure of

: "Literary criticism" and "editing feedback" are two entirely different beasts. Litcrit is about looking at an existing text and analyzing it. You look at the author's intent, you look at symbolism,

: In narration, stay in one tense. "She had green eyes" is fine, because your entire story is in the past tense — the "present-past," if that makes sense. If she had green eyes as a

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