My main character in my book that i'm writing is a 14yr old teen who suffers from mental health problems, including depression & anxiety issues My question therforee is two fold:- 1/ How do you write a character with such issies? 2/ how do you write secondary charcters that don't understand these issues?
I'm trying to make the chracter as realistic as possible so that the reeader can relate to them as a person so my main character will get anxious, upset, angry, frustrated, depressed and i was wondering how you write that as the character goes through the book
Ok, that’s an easier question to answer. Readers relate to characters they can empathise with. Empathy means understanding the character’s thoughts and feelings, and also knowing the reasons why they say and do the things they do. That means that you, the writer, need to know these things too, and ensure you communicate them to the reader in your writing. In the case of your character with anxiety and depression, you will need to research these illnesses to make sure you understand them, then consider how they affect your character, and then write about those effects at important points. For example, you might decide that your character is socially anxious and therefore appears aloof to others. You will need to make it clear why the character is coming across that way so that the reader understands it is due to anxiety. For the other characters who don’t understand, you will need to decide why they don’t understand. Perhaps they are lacking in empathy themselves so they don’t care about his issues. Or maybe they don’t know much about depression or anxiety so are unable to understand. Or maybe the main character doesn’t communicate well about his conditions with others so they haven’t had the opportunity to talk to him about it. In any case, I would suggest doing research into these conditions, how they affect people, and how other people come to an understanding of them (or don’t).
I've been wondering about something similar--my character has a personality disorder. My latest solution is to write the character in deep POV, first person. I'll be right in his head looking out. It surprised me what happened when I first did this--I felt frightened to be in this deranged mind. The other characters would be written in omniscient third person, but working out how to change the POV is still a problem.
I agree completely with what @mashers has said for the OP, so I'll just answer you. Either change POV by having a new chapter (and it doesn't matter if that new chapter is shorter than the chapter for your main character) or change POV every time you have a star break because a scene has changed. For the love of God, don't change halfway through a scene. Few people do it successfully and there's rarely any need. I have to ask, though - why are the rest of the characters in omniscient third person? This is exceedingly hard to pull off and means the reader won't be able to get very close to them at all. In my opinion.
I have done a slight rejig of the beginning of the first chapter but with the intention of giving the main character a back story
If you like video games, play the game Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Or watch the complete story online. The reason is because this game is being praised as an example of how to properly and realistically handle a mentally ill character. A couple of things they did right. 1. They consulted with both mental health professionals who have worked with those who suffer from psychosis as well as those who have actually suffered from it. There's no shortcut to this. If you don't consult with people closest to the illness, there's no way to make any kind of sincere and authentic depiction of the characters. 2. Made the character have a mental illness, but not defined by it. Senua is a powerful character because she's more than just a person with psychosis. She's also a warrior, a lover, and an ambitious person. She has a past and is looking for a future. These traits tend to define her more than her psychosis does. The psychosis is simply she sees and navigates her often tragic world. And while it's often scary and sad, it's also essential to the plot. 3. Showing how the illness affects others. Mental health issues are often a family issue. Hellblade has a character, rarely seen named Dillion. Dillion and Senua are very much in love, but despite this, her illness takes its toll on their relationship. 4. Having a conflict that can be resolved. Mental illness is sadly not an issue that is ever fully resolved, at least not realistically speaking. It can be treated. It can be managed, but it can't be cured. Stories really go to pot when a hero has either no real conflict or a conflict that is unsolvable. If you make those unsolvable parts the entire conflict, then there's nothing the plot is working toward. In Hellblade, the creators were careful to craft a story where Senua has psychosis yes, but a conflict that can be resolved: letting go of her guilt and over coming her grief. She still has psychosis at the end, but at this point she's more in control because she resolved the conflict she could.
