I am a young author writing a fantasy series. In my story, my MC is strong, resilient, and always needs to look perfect on the outside. This is her biggest flaw, not telling the other characters about her feelings, injuries, illnesses, fears, weakness, etc. because she feels the need to look like a leader. She hates feeling helpless and weak.
This character does in fact have something wrong with her. She is plagued by dreams/visions of the past. At first she has no idea why they are happening but soon discovers that someone else is trying to show her something. Unfortunately, this someone else doesn’t understand humans very well. They planted these visions in her brain to let her know important information that only the antagonist knows. The dreams and visions become more vivid, terrifying, and out of control to the point where she sometimes just collapses.
My MC learns that people have had these dreams before, and they always ended up going insane and dying. The MC, terrified of this, also learns that she has to learn to control the visions or the same will happen to her. The best way to do this is to tell others about the dreams.
But.
The MC refuses to do this as she insists she doesn’t need help and can do it by herself and she slowly goes insane. Right before she completely loses it she realizes she can’t always do everything by herself and she does need help.
This is the only way I can ovoid my MC dying in the first book, but giving in just isn’t her character. She is unusually stubborn.
What are some tips to write a character like this in a believable way? This has nothing to do with the dream part of it, so no it’s not world building. I just need to know how to properly write this kind of character.
