(pic is only immortal hero i can think of right now) I don't know if this is the right place to ask this, it is literature related but forgive me if its not the right board. I'm writing a magic involved fantasy novel in which the 5 main protagonist are essentially "immortal" to an extent. They can still be "killed" but will come back to life after a few hours or so.
The 1st reason I decided to give them this power was because this story (like many others) follows the classical "good struggles and eventually triumphs over the forces of evil" formula and in many stories like that the protagonist who may come in life threatening danger from time to time always survives anyway because they are the one carrying the story forward. Whether it be through dumb luck, plot armour, plot convenience or the antagonist's own incompetency, the hero will get out the situation and live no matter how bad things may seem. Protagonists like Harry potter, Luke Skywalker, Eragon and the master chief are few examples that come to mind. They may get gravely wounded in a fight but even if the moment is full of dread and suspense you KNOW they'll come out alive because they have to keep the story going.
Unless the writer plans on a secondary character taking up the roll of main protagonist (which I don't plan on doing) then hero(s) are never truly in danger. I thought that well since main protagonists are hardly ever at risk of actually dying in the middle of the story then there's no problem in making my protagonists partially immortal.
The second and perhaps main reason I'm thinking of making them immortal is so that the Antagonists don't look weak or incompetent. By giving the heroes a sort of "respawn" ability I can avoid moments where if the antagonist had simply just done this the hero would've been dead, the hero would "die" (but not really) the antagonist wins the fight. This is so I can show the difference in skill, power and experience between them because I never liked the idea of villians with years more training and experience losing to the heroes with much less.
While it may seem like a good idea to me, I'm not sure how the reader might feel about it. If they won't feel any sense of suspense in action parts or desperation for the protagonists knowing that they'll come back to life anyway, even though the reader his/herself KNOWS the protagonist isn't going to die anyway because the story must continue with them. Should I keep the idea or scrap it? what do you think?
Aiden Murphy
Fuck off with your genre fiction shit
Justin Peterson
i didn't read all that shit but the answer is no, if you're a good writer you can write around anything
Nicholas Miller
this isn't an adequate explanation, as the author of conan the barbarian did just this, and is firmly sub-literary garbage, its historical flavoring aside. your statement would enable deus ex machina and asspulls abound. it's a very stupid statement. you would probably benefit more from reading and giving the thinking thing a try for once.
Jose Russell
He's not wrong though. Do you really, firmly believe that it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to write a compelling story with an immortal protagonist? If you do, maybe you should follow your own advice, and think.
Grayson Martinez
OP here, for the sake of people who don't like to read on /lit... the tl;dr is: If the protagonists aren't really ever going to die in the story because they are the ones carrying it from start to finish. Is it fine to making the protagonists in the fiction I'm writing partially immortal so that the antagonists don't seem weak, incompetent and lacking of skill. Or would this ruin the suspense for the reader?
Easton Murphy
No it could be done well. For example, even if the protagonist is immortal, if theyre also weak (perhaps in the beginning, before training or finding their magic sword) then they couldnt threaten the antagonist. You could structure it where the antagonist wants to destroy the city/realm/world, and will succeed if the protagonist doesnt stop him, but the protagonist, despite immortal, isnt very powerful, or powerful enough to stop the antagonist. Then the protagonists life isnt whats in danger, and if he "dies" even for a few hours, it could result in failure
Oliver Morales
they're trash writers, just like you. don't blame your lack of talent on arbitrary checklists
Hudson Perez
Actually that is what I plan on doing, with the antagonists being much more skilled and experience beating the protagonists several times until the protagonists train and use the experience they learn to start winning.
The problem I'm really focusing on is whether out right saying they are immortal would destroy the illusion of danger the reader sees them in and ruin the experience. One thing I think might happen however is that the reader would feel more empathy and worry for the antagonists (there are several) because technically speaking they are the real ones in danger since if they die they're dead for good.
Blake Ross
If the protag cant die then the stakes have to involve something other than him being killed.
Maybe he wants to save his loved one? Or his sanity?
Isaiah Lee
Dying isn't a big deal. For example you could make him physically immortal but one of your antagonists could aim for his mind. Also your protagonist would still feel pain so your antagonist could do some next level torture
Christian Campbell
Conan the Barbarian was written in a time where Conan was original. Today, if someone does a Conan spin-off, who would read that? But, staying on topic, immortality is lame. Suspense does not exist when your protagonist is immortal. What is there to be in suspense of? And also, Conan wasn't "immortal", he was just overpowered. I haven't come across a fiction where the protagonist is immortal.
Luis Baker
>Suspense does not exist when your protagonist is immortal. false
Jonathan Johnson
Would you mind writing a short summary, or pitch, of your story? Your thoughts seem kind of all over the place. Is it like a comic-book immortality (Dead Pool, implying it's a gimmick of sorts), or rather "plot armor"?
If it is the former, you would need to make immortality a central character trait and write for it, like already mentioned. The other option would be a straight forward story about getting stronger, which is not bad. Look at how popular super-heroes and shounen anime/manga is.
Dominic Ross
They way the story is that there are 2 factions. One is an ancient order of mages and knights on the fringe of being disbanded due to modernisation. The other is a long standing cult gaining lots of popularity amongst the poor and enslaved. They are both racing to capture these extremely powerful monsters scattered around the world to use for their own purposes.
The protagonists (5 of them) fight for the order and the Antagonist (12 of them) fight for the cult. Both factions have basic disposable soldiers who fight along the protags and antags. The stakes for protags are that if they are killed they are out of action for a few hours before they can return, meaning that they can't help to take down the monsters or protect their own allies from the antagonists. Basically it's like if you die, then your allies will get rekt and killed by either the monster or the cult members during the time you spent being dead
Nathaniel Moore
Give me examples proving this false you fiction pleb.
Jeremiah Hill
So the stakes are the tides of battle.
Write with that in mind, make sure its a pretty big fucking deal if your guys stay alive or else things can go south really quickly and completely flip the script.
For want of a nail, etc.
Brandon Stewart
dont need to, a little basic thought will tell you everything you want to know, hell it's already been mentioned three times now.
Eli Taylor
furthermore, make it a point that they have to deal with immortality.
For example, they could be ashamed that they died in battle. Normally that is honorable, but the immortals are seen as incompetent and the reason for the loss.
Ayden Russell
What? Side characters dying? The only "side characters" (I say this loosely) I've felt suspense over in literature is GoT, and that's because everyone, even the main character, has proved to be disposable by the author. If this isn't what you're applying, then you've provided me with nothing and I remain correct.
Hudson Thompson
blablabla
Camden Clark
I agree and I'll definitely try to do so. I already have it typed down that in spite of them being immortal they still cant get over that natural fear over death and they surely don't like feeling.
Cameron Harris
weak shitpost
Blake Jackson
An anime you might find interesting for reference is Ajin. Many of the main characters are immortal and its still quite thrilling.
Mason Thomas
Make it so there are geuine threats other than death. Maybe the antags capture a protag and seal him inside a coffin and bury him, and tho he lives, he is incapacitated for a time. Buried alive is terrifying and perhaps worse if you cant die
Landon Myers
>Does making the protagonist ""immortal"" remove reader suspense?
Immortality without omnipotence is very scary. Imagine your immortal hero gets weighted down and sunk into the Mariana Trench for a few centuries and goes insane.
The lack of the escape that death offers is terrifying.
David Jenkins
He had plot armor, and overcame just about everything thrown at him, no matter how implausible.
Howard made him immortal.
Juan Thompson
Physical damage isn't the only kind of damage a person can be inflicted with, there's also stuff like emotional and mental damage
John Williams
>Deus ex machina >Named after a convention of Greek tragedy >Being inherently bad Do you learn everything about writing from TV tropes?
Thomas Jenkins
Jesus in all of the Gospels, including the Gnostic ones.
B T F O T F O
James Campbell
You want to avoid Bond Villain Stupidity.
Why not just avoid it? They can kill other characters to demonstrate their lethalness.
If there a multiple occasions where the antagonist can kill the protag and actually does, then your pacing would be complete shit. Why not just have one climactic battle instead of dozens of them, or even two or three of them?
Why make your protagonist immortal just to add in extra climaxes that have no place in the early story?
If you need action early on, why not have your protagonist lose an arm or a hand or a leg to show that fighting the antagonist is serious business?
This is one of those "if you have to ask..." type questions, and I think you already understand most of the flaws behind this idea.
Logan Taylor
So it's basically Superman. He's essentially immortal, has few but glaring weaknesses, and they're often exploited as fuck to his detriment.
You could also say he has come back from the dead, same as Wolverine or damn near any other comic book superhero at some point.
>You could also Pulp Fiction it, if you wanted to do experi-mental literature.
Matthew Turner
Pfft by that definition Luke Skywalker, Indiana Jones, and Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead were all immortal.
>This guy thinks Jesus is a fictional character. >and he actually felt suspense while reading the Bible. Are you kidding me? You pansy.
Juan Taylor
You're so shitty at arguing that it's embarrassing
Jeremiah Ward
>cough READ THE ILLIAD
seriously, look at the story and structure
Adam Flores
>Does making the protagonist ""immortal"" remove reader suspense?
depends on what the suspense hinges on. Emotional turmoil, for example, can be enhanced by "being immortal". You've got shows like mob psycho whose entire premise is an "all powerful" protagonist.
If it's just action schlock, then yes, it is detrimental to the story. The YMS review for Sucker Punch touches on this.
Aaron Bell
>Pfft by that definition Luke Skywalker, Indiana Jones, and Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead were all immortal. all those characters were shit so you're not wrong.
Joshua Mitchell
holy! i want more
Samuel Gomez
>Indiana Jones >shit i greatly dislike your opinion
John Perry
>build him up as immortal >kill him suddenly
devilish.jpg
Brandon Russell
Jesus was basically immortal and his book is a best seller
Nicholas Perry
you could just make their immortality unpleasant a la Wolverine. >die multiple horrible "deaths" throughout lifetime and recover slowly >have to shun society so people dont notice >everyone around you is killed by people trying to study you
Connor Young
>The lack of the escape that death offers is terrifying.
This is always my most prevalent thought whenever I think of an immortality scenario. Living until eighty may seem grand or awful or any number of things depending on the person, but if you carried that through to the depressing end, what would it feel like to have your protagonists watch the death of everyone they knew, of civilisation as a whole? Would they lose hope? Would they snap? Would they still be protagonists?
For your immediate scenario, if they keep dying over and over and they still fear death, what does that do to them on a mental level? What part of their failure hits home for each of them the most? If they get injured but not killed, do they regain limbs or are there injuries or lingering ailments that they have to live with permanently?
As for everyone else in the world, how would they react to that immortality? Derision? Worship? Fear? If people die when you fail and a cult is on the rise, perhaps another cult wants to capture one of your heroes and discover the secrets of their immortality. Yes, you can die, but if you come back and you're still being held captive... that wouldn't be pleasant.
That's what I'd be thinking of anyway, perhaps it'll be of help to you.
Hunter Rivera
>Does making the protagonist immortal remove reader suspense?
Fuck no, not if the story is done right. Pic related.
Ian Brooks
>be immortal >it's cool for the first few decades as you run the hedonic treadmill >everyone you know dies >you watch society slowly kill itself over hundreds of years >you are extremely lonely and depressed for hundreds of years and cannot die no matter how many times you commit suicide >you eventually see nuclear winter taking over the world >you wander the planet like that guy in The Road, witnessing everything around you dead, but you can never be, and you feel so out of place in this universe >there is nothing left to interact with for thousands of years until the few humans remaining have redeveloped primitive civilizations and it took you years of exploring to find them >you are literally insane at this point, insanely lonely, in your own twisted hell for eternity because you can never die >you have deep existential unease without the luxury of eventually dying
No immortality is totally cool
Asher Long
no. consider yu-gi-oh duel monsters. atem never loses, but his duels are no less fun to watch.
all protagonists are immortal anyway. they're not going to die 5 seconds into the story.
Aaron Gonzalez
It depends entirely on what kind of story you're trying to write. If it's typical genreshit for typical genreshit readers (which it sounds like from your description) then yes, your target audience wouldn't like it for all the most plebbish generic reasons you can think of. If your goals with it are more literary than muh sword n sorcery or whatever, you can basically do anything so long as it fits the aesthetic you're going for.
Cameron Jackson
if you make the hero immortal his goal has to be to die. it's simple math
Ayden Allen
>le immortality is hell One of the faggiest cliches in this kind of stuff, t b h.
Alexander Rodriguez
this is an interesting thought that I thought about for a long time. Basically, in the west, our religions make us fear death- "if you love me, you'll live forever in heaven; if you're shit, you'll rot in hell forever" so immortality is a "blessing" because then hell isn't an issue.
but in the east, where religion focuses heavily on reincarnation and trying again and again until you get it right- there is no "hell" in that sense, hell being just going back and trying again. Immortality in eastern cultures very much is considered a curse. "immortals" in anime are usually pretty fucking crazy, and the entire premise of mermaid saga by rumiko takahashi focuses entirely on a couple people who became immortal looking for a way to break the curse so they can just grow old and die.
Ethan Price
re zero
Christopher Young
This is another well written 'immortal' character. One where he seeks only the strong for battle.
Gavin Powell
it can be done right, but if you want there to be stakes you will have to make something else that can be lost. You will legitimately be ruining suspense if there is no real consequences to anything, each battle will really have to mean something other than life or death. Consequences are key to suspense.
Samuel Howard
>but if you carried that through to the depressing end, what would it feel like to have your protagonists watch the death of everyone they knew, of civilisation as a whole? Would they lose hope? Would they snap? Would they still be protagonists? People can adjust to all kinds of crap. They could get used to people around them dying too.
Zachary Brooks
That's fairly simplistic. There are plenty of things an immortal might want to do. Why waste your time with trying to die when you could use it instead to help people?
