Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

60%
+1 −0
Q&A How do you deal with an abrupt change in personality for a protagonist?

There is a bunch of creative methods - some more than other - that can help you. Here are my ideas: Change the narration style One of the most clear ways to signal that something has changed is...

posted 5y ago by Liquid‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-13T11:56:52Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/45470
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T12:00:27Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/45470
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T12:00:27Z (over 4 years ago)
There is a bunch of creative methods - some more than other - that can help you.

Here are my ideas:

## Change the narration style

One of the most clear ways to signal that something has changed is making changes to the narrator.

It's a pretty solid and, well, obvious advice if you have a first person PoV on the characters who changes: having direct access to his/her brain will make your job easy. Your pretty average Joe/Jane can become an alien, elder god reincarnated in the following chapter. Nobody expects his/her thought process to be the same.

This approach, thought, _could_ be done even if you are using other PoVs. For example, in third person limited you could still portray the alien thoughs of the newborn character with a clear difference in themes, patterns and voice.

## _Radically_ change the narration style

While the previous point can be done in a kinda subtler way, nothing keeps you from doing something more daring on a meta-literature level. For example, you could change the PoV entirely:

> Chapter X, 1st person pov Joe:
> 
> ... I felt blood pouring from my eyes in hot trails of tears, then my headache exploded until I couldn't feel anymore.
> 
> Chapter XI, 3rd person pov Newborn elder god:
> 
> The thing awakened and realized it was alive. That idea painted its face (human, and rather ugly for its standards) with a rather quizzical look. It stretched its pale, sleek finger-appendices around as it tried to got use to its body. The thing sneered. It didn't like how the memories from its parents mixed and tainted one another, even if - admittedly - the knowledge of one vastly surpassed the other.

## Kick the dog

In telefilms, "kicking/petting the dog" is a trope where a character is showed doing an act generally considered evil/good. After the change, you can have this kind of "ethically loaded" scene where your character acts different than expected.

Whatever was the moral alignment of the human character, I suppose the newborn elder god will have a wildly different sense of ethics, so there is a lot you can do to show the change. Forgive me if I recycle an old, nasty piece of black humor in the next example:

> The woman waved to it, unaware of its recent new birth.
> 
> "Hey Josh. By any chance, I was wondering if you could help me buy some groceries for the homeless canteen, like we did last month."
> 
> "GROCERIES" the thing noted. "WHY THAT?"
> 
> "W-well," she answered "we need to have something to cook for them!"
> 
> "I SEE. I SUPPOSED WE WERE FEEDING HOMELESS TO THE HOMELESS."

Of course you could play this in a number of ways, depending on how you want the new character to be like. This brings us to the next point:

## Alter character relationship

If the character changes, all its connection with the other character will change as well. One good way of making the audience notice is **making the other characters notice**. Anyone who knew the old human guy will notice changes in his/hers behaviour, exspecially if they were close. I'd rather say that the closer they were, the more evident the changes will be.

All for now, even if I may come up with a later edit.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2019-05-27T13:54:45Z (almost 5 years ago)
Original score: 8