Young Writers Society

Hey all! So, I've been working on Mage Chronicles again after taking a little break from it. One of my main characters is the twin brother of Merlin, one of the central characters in the series. His name is Stryker and he starts out as one of the villains. Eventually, Stryker will return to his brother's side but I'm struggling with how to turn him around. He - mistakenly - believes that Merlin sold him to a Dark Mage as a child. This isn't the case, of course, but he doesn't know that. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to turn his character around?

So I don't know much about your Mage Chronicles, so I can't help you specifically but I can offer some general ideas and questions.

1. What are the circumstances that time? What kind of setting? Sometimes circumstances can force the character to act what he usually wouldn't do. So... it leads to number 2:

2. Does Stryker have some motivation to go to his brother? If he believes whatever Merlin supposedly did, he must surely hate Merlin. Does he have some motivation other than he wants to support Merlin? Or he really realized that Merlin isn't his enemy?

3. Which leads me to the next point: does Stryker learn that Merlin hadn't actually done that? If he does, in what way?

4. Does any other plot events (other than Stryker's side-changing) happens? Any important revelations, plot twists, the goody parts of a novel occur? And it leads me back to the first question: circumstance.

I honestly feel as if I'm setting down questions instead, but I'm hoping this can be some prompts for you. There's no need to post here or something, but I hope this'll make you really think about the setting. Sorry for the rambling.

Figure out how deeply he holds the lie, and what sources he'd trust to plant seeds of doubt. Realizing a lie of this magnitude comes in gradual stages, likely in a bunch of events that eventually change his perception of what happened.

Being met with a straight up correction isn't necessarily what will make him change his mind (right away). While it's a pretty common fantasy trope, being told something that runs counter to a strongly held belief will likely get you to shut down and completely ignore it because human beings hate feeling wrong.

Being told otherwise might get the start of a seed planted that gets logic working, but it might not. It can take dozens of resources to come to grips with an incorrect belief, if you don't throw them all away first because it feels wrong, and you value your gut feeling over rational thought. This actually happens more often than people would think.

Feeling like you are wrong actually causes the highest amount of psychological stress a person can experience, and it takes lots of practice to get used to it. So your character likely needs a certain amount of humility and mental agility to even entertain the possibility of changing their minds, because if you're not practiced in changing your mind then you will take a very long time to change (if you change at all).

You then also need to consider the sources. Anybody aligned with Merlin he will likely discredit on sight, because he would feel it's Merlin manipulating him through others. A neutral source would be met with slightly more credibility (could be genuinely neutral, could be somebody he doesn't know is aligned with Merlin— but note, this sentiment could make him discredit them).

The most trusted source would be something internal, somebody he knows making some sort of slip up that gets him wondering what his reality is and not. It can also be something he discovers "outside" of his environment, because:

If he's still around danger, and still steeped in a place where the belief Merlin sold him keeps him safe, then he will likely be unable to handle both staying safe and processing the fact he was wrong. You need a certain amount of distance from danger to process the full extent of the danger properly.

It could also be that once he gets "outside" he starts to see Merlin's positive influence, and realizes that a person with such positive influence is very unlikely to have done that to him. He could also work to destroy it.

There are a lot of maybe's and possibly's in here because realizing a secret is really complicated! Hope this gives at least some direction.

Thank you guys! That actually helps a lot.