I recently took up a rather complicated challenge, write two characters who were originally one person and have them grow into two distinctive personalities. The idea was formed from the idea that people are a mess of contradictions, and it would be interesting to split those contradictions apart to form a new set. Say these two don't really remember who they were originally and the plot is them traveling to find out, and don't seem to have much of personalities to start with, i.e. quiet and slow to react in any way. How would you like to see this pair develop in personality? Or what personality traits do you think they would pick up along the way?
I would consider giving them a "core" to build from, and then divert from each other based on their experiences. That is to say, when they split, they are both suffering from amnesia, obviously, and are both in different rooms. They are both immature and easily irritated, but highly analytical and are average at reading body language and some of the more subtle social cues. This is their core, the thing that both character's share and will build from. Due to the different rooms they wake up in, when they leave, one goes left and ends up training themselves for physically for combat, while the other turns right and ends up training magically for combat. The one who trains physically learns how to harness their irritation for additional power in combat, using their analytical skills to improve their abilities to read body language for use both on and off the battlefield as they mature into a military leader. The one that trains magically ends up recessing from society, needing comparatively minimal interactions with others to improve their craft after learning the basics. They turn their analytical nature to working out the secrets of magic and weaponization of such secrets. They learn how to calm their irritation and immaturity in order to gain better self control, and thus better control over their magic. Additionally, due to the fact that, after their period as a Magic Student, they rarely utilised their inherent skills at reading body language and social cues outside of a very limited group of likeminded researchers, their ability to read body language and social cues started to stagnate, not going away but being far weaker than they were originally. This is just one simple example that's possible that perfectly fits the request. I mean, it is overly simplistic and is built based on the Western tropes for Knight MC's and Wizard MC's (Knight MC becomes charismatic leader of men, Wizard MC becomes grouchy dude who just wants to get back to their research so that potentially world-ending threat should just shut up and bugger off already). Alternatively, the Physical MC could be the less social one due to jealousy, while the Magical MC could become a social butterfly in order to gain research funding for themselves and their fellow Magic Researchers. There is a LOT you can do with this, you just need three things. A good starting point, a good diverting point, and a direction for each of them to go after diverging.
M Bison is the villain of Street Fighter. In one of the game's, it's revealed that he split his soul in two, with the "good" side becoming a character called Rose, with the implication that it manifested itself into a solid body. According the the Street Fighter Wiki, however, it says that Rose was his student in manipulating Soul Power, and he shoved the "good" side of his soul into her in order to gain the ability to utilise Psycho Power. So I suspect that Chu2 just thought that M. Bison & Rose is an example of what you were looking to recreate.
I had read a lot of stories centered on that, basically cutting up the 'evil' and 'desire' in the soul so they could cultivate better/become god. One story I read is Anansi Boys where the MC is a normal and meek human whereas his twin soul is dapper, handsome, and has magic powers and they split because their granny don't like how boisterous the original as a kid and just split them to two so she only take care of one meek kid.
Yeah, removing the evil bit is rather popular, though it seems, at least in the ones I read, that the personality that isn't the main one, usually the "evil" one never becomes a full-fledged character. In this case the original divided her soul in half and removed most of the memories that made her who she was. If it makes it easier, think twins. What I'm mainly looking for are quirks, flaws, odd habits, or contradicting traits that seem fun, mainly because I'm have a hard time making them different people beyond a generic "that one likes magic" and "that one likes swords" ...and I promise that is not a shot at you drake, your post was helpful
I was giving broad strokes examples so that there was something to look at. Separating between "Physical" and "Non-Physical" directions is almost mildly less generic than separating between "Good" and "Evil", which is why I used it. Particularly since the way you phrased your request suggested to me that the "Good"/"Evil" split would be antagonistic to what you wanted unless it is presented as "these circumstances made MC a productive member of society, while those would make MC a disruptor of society". What you need to do is design other character's than your two MC's. Specifically, for the MC's shared traits, you need to have a full design for the person the MC was, while for "opposing" traits you need to design the characters who the MC's interact with after the split. For example, you could have both your MC's have a habit of tensing and releasing their left arm when they're bored and can't do anything. This is picked up from the person they were having regularly hiding their left arm and doing something random with it to disperse their boredom while stuck (like some minuscule magic, writing letters with their finger underneath a desk, anything like that which varies depending on time and place). This habit can develop differently based on which path the two went, with the physical one developing the habit of playing with a knife in their left hand, while the magical one starts using an imaginary abacus with their left hand to calculate whatever magical theorem that's currently in their mind. Both of which were things other people they were friends with did near them, and they picked up as a boredom distraction habit, though adjusting it to their left hand because that was the one that their predecessor used to stave off boredom. There's also a whole lot of things that they can just keep. How they walk should be similar, particularly if the original was already experienced in physical training (as that would mean that the Physical MC's movements wouldn't be overly adjusted due to the training). How they stretch themselves can differ, with the Physical one caring more about releasing muscle tension and the stretches taught in training, and the Magical one caring more about immediate release and the stretches done naturally.
That's a really good point...and I suppose the fact that I only have one new character so far that interacts with the two of them might be a root of the problem... The other problem is that they travel together and experience the same things, which can limit how they grow differently. Hmmm, I like the hand thing, so I'll mess with that. It looks like I'll have to change the plot a bit, I was originally going to have the little ones find the original's "home" rather quickly and meet her "family" and get a lead after learning a bit from them, but that would only reinforce the original's personality over their own and delay their progress... OOOooooo but that means I can throw a few of the world points that I haven't been able to fit into a story yet in as they wander randomly around the area and make it slightly more episodic as they move around rather than focusing solely on the overall plot! YESS you beautiful people you