In my fantasy WIP humans and demons are at war. One year before the start of the story one demon disguises himself as human and infiltrates enemy ranks for the sake of a secret mission. Over the course of the story, we see both his personas until the two are revealed to be one and the same. When I got feedback on the story I was told that the human persona lacked conflict beyond the romance plot he becomes a part of. Discussing it to help the solution take shape I got the suggestion to not keep the reader in the dark about them being the same person, as I have done up until now. This decision that needs to be made has me torn. I like the idea of the reveal being a surprise to both the reader and the characters. But I can see where the one coming with the suggestion is coming from too. And it is hard figuring out conflict for the human persona since he is just a mask the demon persona hides his true identity behind. To hopefully get more thoughts on the matter to ease my decision, I now turn to you guys. What do you think? Would you tell the reader the truth while leaving the characters involved in the dark? Or would you keep even the reader in the dark in order to spring the truth on both them and the characters at the same time? And how would you go about solving the problem with one of the two personas being underdeveloped?
I think you would get more tension if the reader knew the character was in disguise but most people in the story were in the dark. I think that would be a more thrilling read in my opinion. If you do want to keep the reader in the dark I think you have to make that part of the plot throughout the whole story. Maybe treat him/her as a mole and the characters are trying to find out who the mole is. The reader can either suspect the character is or perhaps other characters are the mole. I think you have to go one way or the other though. You can't keep the reader in the dark and the characters within the story in the dark completely. That's like having the ending turning out that it was all a dream.
Yeah, I can see the potential for tension and drama having the reader being in on the secret can bring. And when I said keeping the characters in the dark I meant only up until the part when he is exposed.
Well, clearly if you want to keep him in the dark, you have to give him a plausible human motivation. It shouldn't be too difficult, if you have already deepened your world. Just find something that is sort of similar to what the demon wants, and can be accomplished on the way. Maybe make it look like he has to take a big risk in doing things that might help the demon, but doesn't want to.
Alternatively, he's having issues in his human persona because he seems very cold and unfeeling, and the people he associates with as a 'human' are uneasy about him. I do like the sound of this twist a lot! And making him very demon-ish, even while 'human', would also make it so the twist doesn't come out of nowhere. To keep the romance angle, maybe there's not just the romantic tension between your protag and the girl-- maybe there's people who think they shouldn't be together because hey! This guy's kinda a creep! And are willing to take more severe steps in order to keep the girl safe from him. Maybe he's trying to get a 'promotion' of some kind (to gather more intel for his cause) but people don't trust him, or something like that.
Adding something he can only do as human... Ok, this actually sparked an idea. I didn’t mention it in my OP, but the character is a half-breed. He got the infiltration mission because of that since he can pass as an actual human much better than fullblooded demons. I had killed off both his parents but maybe I should keep his human father alive? And have the human persona look for him and eventually find him? There are characters who are suspicious of him, that’s for sure. Some very minor characters almost outright bully him. Maybe pushing the bullies hostility into the foreground a little more adds a little conflict among other ideas I’m toying with?
What type of PoV are you using? If this character is a point of view character where the reader has insight into his thoughts then keeping it a secret from them seems clunky. At some point he would think about how he has infiltrated the human ranks. Knowing that he is a spy is likely to keep readers more engaged since then the conflict of his human persona is trying not to be discovered, with the added complication of will he, won't he defect to the human side. Now if we can't see into his thoughts then it would likely be harder to actually reveal this information, unless there are revealing actions like him having to report back to his demon allies. Though revealing it to the reader still seems better to me. Suspense is better than shock, right? Though mystery is good too. I guess it depends on how it's been presented.
He is one of several P.O.V characters, in both personas. When the human persona is the P.O.V character I worded his thoughts carefully so that when he mention the word mission the reader thinks he is thinking about his mission as the protags newly apointed bodyguard. His real mission of course is to win the protag over to the demon’s side. He just never planned on falling in love with the target. And here I see a benefit for having the reader know the truth - I can really show him struggling between the mission and his growing feelings for the protag and get good tension out of it.
It seems that the late surprise reveal offers less to the reader than knowing the whole time. I'd tell the readers right away. It can still be a surprise, but in the beginning of the story.
As I have mentioned earlier I can see the benefits of letting the reader know. The hard part would probably be where and how to work those new pieces into the parts I have already finished. But I might be able to make it work. Not doing it as a how-did-we-get-here style prologue showing the part where the characters find out the truth about him, though. Having the protag break down and cry over the lies and manipulation when we just are meeting the characters present in the story and aren’t invested in them yet would lessen the later scene when it happens in more detail. At least I fear that it could.
Here's a thought too, maybe for the first chapter-ish of the introduction to the character we don't know? But right at the end before the P.O.V. switch he has some kind of internal thought or something that tips off the reader. Then you can still pull the twist- but in a much shorter timeframe so it's not nearly as awkward and/or clunky.
I will most likely do it early on now, but given the fact that I had two-thirds of the draft finished when the suggestion came I want to try and keep all that and just add little pieces and tweak the existing text here and there. I have a few ideas I'm considering, but I need to make them work with the existing opening. The character I had trouble with isn't the protag and appears for the first time in either persona at the end of chapter three.