Transitions

[drza]

Let me see if I can phrase/frame this correctly.  I'm telling a 1st person story, but the protagonist has multiple identities.  He is a shape-shifter that is hiding from a bunch of people so he spends most of his time as a little guy, but once a month he can't help but change into a bigger guy for a couple of days.

He spends the majority of my book as the little guy, but he makes the change in the middle of the story.  The change has been foreshadowed at this point, but the reader doesn't expressly know it's coming.  The protagonist just wakes up the third day as a huge guy, and he goes through the day with a different set of imperatives and even a different personality than he had expressed in the first third of the book.

I liked this idea as I wrote it, but both of my first two beta readers were confused by the transition.  One of them stopped outright, sure that he must have been missing some pages that explained what was going on and not wanting to spoil the story.  The other kept going, but did so even though she didn't really know what was going on.

My question to you guys is, how would you suggest I approach this?  Would you suggest more foreshadowing?  Maybe write the protagonist's thoughts up until the second of change (at which point he loses memory) and have them thinking about what is about to happen?  Or would it be crazy to go further the other way and try to make it even more shocking, with the thought that the jolt would make the reader really want to continue to figure out what happened?  I would like the switch to have some impact so I don't want to completely hold the readers' hands through this, but I also don't want this to just be a point that throws people off until they put the book down.  What do you think?

[meh]

Sounds to me like you need a better hook just after the first transition.    I suspect I would stay away from more foreshadowing during Persona 1.

(Take that fwiw: I've never been known to make things easy for the reader)

[Ecuadorian Super Termite]

      Krug woke up with a groan. With a grunt he rubbed some heat into his toes. The bedcovers didn't reach halfway down his shins, and his feet had damn near frozen in the night.
      He made his way down the hall, wondering if this was what frostbite felt like. He ducked to avoid hitting his head on several doorframes. "Bloody hobbit holes," he muttered.
      After some burned coffee and refrigerated pizza, Krug threw on the biggest overshirt he could find, crumpled at the back of the closet. It stretched in the shoulders and rode up to his waistline. He dug around in the closet another few minutes, but couldn't find any man-sized shoes. He settled on a pair of rubber sandals that didn't reach all the way back to his heels, and headed out into the morning.

*********

Very doable. Set up beforehand with the midget being happy in his hobbit hole, and how he got cheap rent because man-sized people didn't want it. At the end of the previous chapter, have him wrapped up snug in his midget bed, and note that his toes are nice and toasty.

[Gruud]

I'd try adding a piece of family jewelry (or similar) to the "little guy", that will still be present when he becomes the "big guy", and use that to help clue the reader in on what happened.

Or, there's always the tried and true "clothes bursting off his body" bit. ;-)

In other words, it sounds like you just need a ready way of alerting the reader that this is the same being who has magically changed "overnight", so the incongruity doesn't bump them on the head and wreck their immersion.

I also agree with the idea that a little foreshadowing goes a long way, lest you run the risk of telegraphing things to the reader, leaving them completely unsurprised.

[belial.1980]

I concur with everybody. A really good hook right after the transformation works. Foreshadowing too. Maybe 1 keen detail that you gently allude to over and over, that readers remember but file to the back of their minds.

For example: you can mention offhand, during a sequel between scenes, that the character is nailing pillows to the tops of all the doorways while he's discussing something with another character or group of characters. It turns out these pillows are to minimize the bruising when he inevitably bumps his head going through the doors after he's changed shape.

Definitely not a sterling example but I think you catch my drift. Something along those lines, where the you introduce an element and allude to it with enough regularity that the reader begins to see that it's not random. They won't understand and might even get frustrated in not knowing at first, but when you spring it on them it's like a lightbulb going off over their heads.

I think a good example of this is the climax in the movie Little Miss Sunshine. (I know it caught me off guard) But if you go back and re-watch the movie you'll see this ending was foreshadowed along the way. $.02 dropped.  Good luck!

[Nickeris86]

you could also go in the exact opposite direction and give absolutely no foreshadowing that this person is a shape shifter. what i mean is that you could treat the big personality and the little personality as completely different characters and not reveal until then end that they are the same person through some kinda dramatic confrontation.

have the big character complain about how he wishes he could move out of his little apartment but the rent is to good to pass up. and pretty much sever all connection between the two, give the big guy his own cloths and his own routine, maybe even his own job (freelance bouncer or something).

[shades of grey]

theres always the classic sitting up and smacking his head on the roof "funny, never noticed the ceiling was that low before", then possibly stubs toes on the opposite wall getting out of bed

[meh]

you could also go in the exact opposite direction and give absolutely no foreshadowing that this person is a shape shifter. what i mean is that you could treat the big personality and the little personality as completely different characters and not reveal until then end that they are the same person through some kinda dramatic confrontation.

I like this, even if it is a bit

(click to show/hide)

Fight Club

[drza]

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.

[Starbeam]

The foreshadowing might seem heavy handed to you, but not necessarily to readers.  You know what's going to happen, and sometimes that ends up things not being explained/shown as clearly as it could be.  Which is why most people tend to look for someone to read for them.  And since you mentioned you have beta readers, ask them where they got confused, and if they noticed the foreshadowing.  And what might help to make it clearer.  You might need to give them specifics to look for, or ask specific questions for them to pay attention to stuff.  They have to remember that they're reading to try to help you improve the piece, not just because you asked them to read it.