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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 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-13T11:56:52Z (almost 5 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 (almost 5 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 (almost 5 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 (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 8