You assume the character is heterosexual why ?

*shrugs* Why not?  This was a brainstorming session, right?  I threw an idea out there, and if it doesn't stick we try another.  I don't see any reason the concept of a bad/gray character that has sexual tension with the protagonist wouldn't work for whatever orientation the characters are.  Do you?

I am no expert, but  when I have trouble getting into a characters head I base it loosely on someone I know/have heard/read about. Even if I don't entirely understand why someone does something you can reasonably predict what someone would do in a circumstance and often that is good enough. It helps build mystery  Seems to me that if you leave something open it gives the reader room to fill in blanks on their own which can be fun. Heck that's 90% of this forum.

Cajun Guy

I sometimes do something similar.  One of my characters went from 'wooden, almost place-holder" to possibly my favorite one to write once I started pretending that the character was a friend of mine.  I no longer even have to think when writing that character's dialog, and it actually makes everyone else easier to write as well because I can see the scene from multiple POVs.

Thank you, everyone, for the suggestions.  I think that I should clarify a few things, though:

1) It's a first person story, so the "little guy" and the "big guy" are both "I" in the narrative. 

2) The "little guy" is actually an imitation of an actual person that the protagonist made a deal with.  So during the once a month when he turns big the other little guy comes to replace him, so the protagonist interacts with a character that looks, acts, and has the same name as the guy he had been earlier in the book.

3) My "foreshadowing" was already pretty heavy-handed, I thought.  I mean, I already had a scene where the little guy is fighting to keep from changing, where his limbs keep trying to enlarge and he is fighting with all he has to stay small.  Then, the next day he goes to a mark on the wall and determines that despite his best efforts he had already grown some.  That was why, before other people read it, I thought that it would be fine to have the character wake up in his big body the next day.

But I think that I will try a few things from your suggestions.  The jewelry piece idea especially fits, since I've already got a medallion that the protagonist wears and I can just reference that right off the bat when he wakes up.  I also think that I could be a bit clearer with my descriptions immediately pre- and post- change so that the change transition is really the only thing that the reader has to wrestle with instead of having a few other loose ends the way that it is currently written.

Thanks again, and if you have any other advice by all means keep it coming.

I feel incredibly accomplished just to be making this post.  I've tried to register to this site several times in recent years, and every time I did I would never get the activation e-mail no matter how many times I requested it.  And there's no 'contact us' link that I could find, so eventually I'd just give up.  But finally, with the third e-mail address that I've tried, I am now officially a member of this board and can respond to some of the threads I've lurked upon.  Woot!

Anyway, on topic, I decided one day to sit down and write out my ultimate series with everything that I like in it.  This was in 1996.  Since then I have brainstormed, written backstories, and gotten to know a whole cast of characters in a world that has changed everything from tone to genre in the last 14 years.  What began as pseudo sci fantasy (that, upon re-reading my earliest notes sounded suspiciously like Star Wars, which I had just read at the time...hmmm) has morphed to medieval high fantasy to non-medieval high fantasy to some combo of all of the above that includes...you guessed it, everything that I like.   The problem was (actually, 2 problems) that a) when I tried to actually start writing the book itself it was harder than pulling my own teeth and b) my life leaves me no time in which to write.

About this time last year, though, I got so frustrated with one of my favorite series to read that I did something that I never thought I'd do...I sat down and wrote out a fanfic scene to mollify myself.  I started thinking about the scene on the way to work, and by the time I actually got to work I could see it so clearly that I just sat down and wrote out what was bursting in my mind.  It took about 2 hours, and I know it needed polishing, but when I got done and read it my first thought was...you know, this isn't bad.  I even let two other people see it (didn't feel comfortable putting a story from someone else's world out there beyond just e-mailing it to a couple of folks), and their reaction was...you know, this isn't bad.  But more importantly, the realization that I actually could write scenes instead of just brainstorming jump started me on writing my own stuff.

Long story short, I've been on (intermittent) fire sense December, and I'm within spitting distance of finishing the first draft of my very first novel.  No idea if it's any good or not, but after almost 14 years of "someday I'm going to write something" I'm pretty jazzed to almost have my foot on the path.  The overarching story is a huge, high fantasy epic set in multiple locations over about 30 years that would take me lots and lots of words over lots and lots of volumes to write.  This particular novel started off as just a lark, an intermission between the early stuff and later stuff I had planned out.  But for the first time the story is just flowing out of me, so now it's taken on a life of its own.  It's got an urban fantasy feel, though it's based in a fantasy world.  The protagonist looks like an everyday Joe, a short kinda chubby guy with glasses.  Only he's got some were-beast/wizard/skin-shifter things going on to keep things interesting.  Oh, and he's been banished from his home land for reasons yet unspecified.  Oh, oh, and there are several groups of very powerful people that have been trying their best to kill him for a very long time.  Oh, oh, oh, and one of those groups has kidnapped his godson.  He'd do anything to protect him...the only problem is, the only options he can come up with are to either kill everyone which causes everyone that he loves to die as well, or to protect all of his loved ones so that the only one that needs die is him...