Hidden Identity Stories – What Do I Need to Know?

Melanie Dickerson here, talking about one of my favorite story devices – main characters with hidden identities.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget how much I loved reading The Scarlet Pimpernel as a young teenager. Here was this courageous hero, risking his life to save innocent people from the guillotine, a British aristocrat in love with a woman who might actually be his enemy. So he kept up his disguise even in front of his own wife, pretending to be a silly, empty-headed fop when he was actually the heroic Scarlet Pimpernel.

And then there was the old black-and-white TV show about Zorro that I loved as a kid. It was a similar story, about a young man who pretended to be a coward by day, but by night he was the courageous crusader against the unjust and corrupt authorities in Spanish California. This character directly inspired my hero in Magnolia Summer, my historical romance set in 1880 Alabama.

One of my favorite movies is the version of The Count of Monte Cristo with Jim Caviezel. The sweet and innocent hero is treated so cruelly by his friend-turned-enemy, locked up in a brutal prison for 13 years, so that when he gets out he is determined to get revenge. He becomes the wealthy and clever Count of Monte Cristo, fooling everyone who knew him, except for the woman who loved him and still loves him. In the end, he realizes that love is so much more important than revenge, and God may have seemed to have abandoned him, but He was there all along, believing in him when he had stopped believing in God.

And this story device shows up in fairy tales all the time. 

Snow White is forced to suffer abuse at the hands of a wicked queen/stepmother, treated like a servant when she’s actually a princess. And The Goose Girl is actually a princess who was forced to work as a lowly servant while her handmaiden marries the prince. And of course, there’s the Beast in Beauty and the Beast, who’s actually a young, handsome prince under a spell. In The Frog Prince, the prince has been turned into a frog. All of these hidden identity stories were fun for me to turn into my own medieval versions, as I love the hidden identity device.

So is it only possible for historical writers? Not necessarily. Nicholas Sparks did it in his contemporary novel, Safe Haven. The heroine was running from her evil abusive husband. She changed her name, took a deceased person’s social security number, dyed her hair, and ran away, settling in a town where she knew no one.

So what do you need to keep in mind if you want to do a hidden identity story?

Make sure it’s plausible.

This is important with any story, but pay particular attention to making the hidden identity plausible. In my Little Mermaid story, I needed a plausible reason that a pampered, privileged ward of the king would run away and live as a poor, lowly servant girl, lying about her identity. So I made the heroine in TheSilent Songbird desperate to escape an arranged marriage to a disgusting man who had the king fooled but not my heroine. 

I allowed her to fall in love quickly, or at least become infatuated quickly, with a handsome young man who was traveling back to his home village. Who would care about a comfortable, privileged life if she was in love with a poor man? Not my Evangeline.

And for my most recent published novel, The Warrior Maiden, I did something I didn’t think I would ever want to do, which was to have my heroine disguise herself as a man. I generally thought those stories, where the heroine fooled everyone into thinking she was a man, weren’t very believable. But when I took on the Mulan story in my newest retelling, I dived in and wrestled with all the things that make it difficult to disguise a post-adolescent girl as a boy.

First, I had to give her a believable reason for wanting to be a man and go to battle. So I made it necessary in order for her mother to be taken care of. (There’s more to it than that, but you get the gist.) Second, for the problem of the fact that a young woman’s body just does not look like a man’s, I had my Mulan wear her father’s baggy clothes. I also had her cut her hair and smear mud on her face so it would be less obvious that she didn’t have facial hair. Third, I had her disguise her voice and her walk. I think it also helped that she had a friend with her, her armor bearer, who basically treated her like a man, which would make it more believable to the other soldiers.

Next, I had to consider how she and the hero would interact with each other while the hero thought she was a boy. I didn’t want him to be attracted to her as a boy, but I wanted him to like her, to be drawn to her as a friend, almost as a younger brother. I did want the heroine to be attracted to him, but of course she could not show how she felt about him. I didn’t think I could sustain this deception, however, for very long, so I had the hero discover she was a woman about one-third of the way through the story. So then there was the conflict and story question of how and when her other fellow soldiers would discover her identity and how they would react, and how and when the hero would cease to think of her as a brother and fall in love with her as a woman. She was already pretty much in love with him. Which brings me to another point.

Decide who will know the secret and how the secret will be kept. 

This is pretty self-explanatory. In Magnolia Summer, no one knows Truett’s secret except one friend, who leaves after the first chapter. It’s less complicated that way. In The Golden Braid, 

the only person who knows the true identity of Rapunzel is the evil villainess, Gothel. The truth is revealed by a scar and a woman who knew her as a little child and who recognizes the scar. In my Snow White story, 
The Fairest Beauty, the truth is proven by a birthmark on the heroine’s neck. 

Have fun with the reveal.

This is the most fun part. You can make it as dramatic as you can dream up. Mulan’s identity as a woman is revealed when she gets shot and she begs the hero not to look at her wound. The only way she can persuade him is to tell him her secret. My Southern Zorro, in Magnolia Summer, is revealed to the heroine when she finds his hiding place for his cape and hood disguise in a cave. Her suspicions are confirmed when she holds the cape to her face and breathes in the hero’s scent.

It’s a romance, after all.

Beware the lying and deception problem.

It can be a bit tricky for us when we write for a Christian audience. We don’t want our heroes and heroines to lie and deceive other people for their own gain. And even in the general market you probably don’t want an unlikable, deceptive main character. Which is why we have to give them a really good reason for disguising themselves and basically deceiving everyone around them. And that can make the reveal all the more dramatic, because the hero or heroine may feel guilty for deceiving the other, as Evangeline did in TheSilent Songbird. Westley wondered how she could have deceived him, not only into believing that she was servant girl when she was actually a king’s ward, but also because she pretended to be mute and unable to speak, when in actuality, she was famed for her beautiful singing voice. Drama drama drama. I love it.

So now it’s your turn. Tell me if you love hidden identity stories and which is your favorite. Have you ever tried to write one? Let me know in the comments, and one lucky commenter will receive a signed hardcover copy of The Warrior Maiden, my Mulan story just released in February.

Melanie Dickerson is the author of fairy tale retellings and other historical romances, many of which have hidden identities. She's in love with drama of the fictional variety while enjoying sunsets and peace and quiet at her new house on a hill in the country in Alabama where she can hear geese, sheep, cows, and donkeys while she dreams up lots of angst and drama for her characters and stories.