There is a young adult male elf who one day is captured in the woods by a race of small humanoid frogs who take him back to their village in the swamp. During his captivity, he develops an alternate personality to help him cope and to try and convince them to release him. This personality embraces the lifestyle and culture of the humanoid frogs. For example, when given food that the elf would find disgusting, the frog personality would take over and happily eat whatever grub they gave him. I'm having trouble thinking of how to introduce this frog personality into the story, Can you help me?
Does it have to actually be another personality, or is he just learning how to appeal to them? It seems much simpler to just have him learn about them and then appeal to them in terms they might understand. But maybe you have a reason for such psychological trickery, or maybe that's the main point you want to explore in the story.
I don't entirely know to be completely honest. I'm not sure if I want it to be psychological, magic or something else. The froggies want to indoctrinate and integrate the elf into their culture for their own purposes. Historically both races hate each other so the froggies would act very gruff towards him.
In a case where you're not sure which way to go I would do a bunch of freewriting—just sit down and write very freeform, don't worry about grammar or spelling or anything, and write really fast. Put your characters in a situation (maybe several) and just see how they interact. Let your subconscious work it out. Try some with a split personality, some without, and see which feels more natural or just works better.
I agree with Xoic freewriting exercise (when m suck, i resort to that, sometimes coming up with a dozen scenarios for 1 scene). My suggestion is, write the split personality like any other character. It IS a different character, after all. After you establish that its the same BODY, the personalities are different. i have a WIP where my MC can see the souls of the dead and has one such soul latched on to her: her dead mother. A) she never knew her mom so she doesnt recognize the spirit as her mom. B) she doesnt know she can see spirits (until MUCH later), so she simply thinks its her childhood imaginary friend that hasnt gone away. C) she doesnt tell people because she's afraid that she's crazy. Basically, she talks to herself a lot and that spirit sometimes moves her actions. basically like a split personality. When I have scenes with just them "together" or talking to one another, I have my MC speaking out loud in quotations, and the spirit speaking to her in italics. If I have a scene were my MC is in action or with other people, I have her conversations with the spirit in italics (the MC's italics are in quotes and the spirits in not in quotes). Stephanie Meyer (Twilight saga), as an adult book called The Host where there are 2 personalities/minds in one body. Brief premise is: Aliens take over earth. they take humans and wipe out their consciousness and replace it with their own. BUT the alien called Wanderer ("Wanda"), takes the body of Melanie, but Melanie's consciousness hasnt been wiped from the body. so Wanda and Melanie exist within 1 body. You always know which is which... Wanda is naive and has a victim mindset. Melanie is strong willed and takes no shit from anyone (even slapping Wanda...er... herself, i guess... when Wanda kisses Melanie's human boyfriend). point is... treat frog personality as a separate character from elf personality. to outside characters, they are the same person. to readers, they are different and should be treated as such.
