Stripping the Main Character's Plot Armour?
I have a main character, I'm attempting to disguise this fact. But it is tricky. Out of nowhere, the character rises up as a successful military leader. The events that lead up to that are plausible enough, but the focus on that military victory and the character leading it will be likely to brand them the main character. And with that comes the expected safety and attachment of plot armour.
Question being how to prevent the plot armour.
Methods:
One idea is to de-emphasize their main character status, have the story told mainly from other characters' PoVs after the battle.
Another way is to set up a secondary main character (or more than one), give the impression the present one can be replaced (as has happened before).
Or just give the impression this is the kind of story where the main character can die, whether at the end or sooner.
A final method, would be to have the main character isolated from other character deaths. You don't put them in the thick of it where everyone else is dying, so it stands out that the main character is still alive, but have them in safe places where death is rare. This makes sense for a military general character. When death and danger does suddenly come to them, you can make it feel much more dangerous (where the emphasis isn't on being the big damn hero, but on surviving).
If others could give advice on this, I would be much obliged.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/25044. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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There is a way to achieve uncertainty:
Everyone is a rabbit
The prime example is Watership Down, a movie about rabbits that kills characters left and right like there's no tomorrow, but so does nature. Everybody knows that rabbits are nature's fluffy popcorn, right?
Other examples include: All-guardsman party, The Walking Game of Dead Thrones
Based upon the underlying logic of these, you can achieve uncertainty.
Let me elaborate: Game of Thrones works because it's "realistic", and in real life, there are no plot armors. In real life, Zrínyi Miklós had the best chances of driving the kebab off from Hungary, and he was killed by a boar. The truth is that nothing is certain, in fact, our universe had likely come into existence by chance, by a large quantum fluctuation.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30743. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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The problem with plot armor is not false safety, but false peril.
The central peril of a story is always moral, not physical. It is about what a character wants and what they are willing to do to get it. Physical danger may test the character's resolve or complicate their plans, but the real heart of the story is what choices they make in the face of those dangers and in pursuit of their goals.
If the only peril driving the story is whether the central character will or will not die, the story is a weak one with no moral core. Concealing who the main character is to make their death seem more possible does not in any way change this. The reader's anxiety about the possible death of a character depends on how much they care about them and how much the root for them (or how much they hope for their salvation). But all that goes with being the main character. Every character should have an arc, but the main character is the character whose arc is the main arc of the story. If there is no arc, they are a red shirt and their death does not matter.
(Actually, for from being more unexpected, the death of a red shirt is incredibly obvious. You could set your watch by it.)
In a good story, even a suspense story, the reader's pleasure does not depend on surprise. We can read good suspense stories multiple times and they are just as suspenseful each time. A good author can have the reader's heart in their throat for a character even on the tenth reading. It is always about engagement, never surprise.
If plot armor is a concern, therefore, it is because the engagement is not sufficient. If the engagement is not sufficient, chances are it is because the reader is not engaged by the moral peril of the story. The fix is not obfuscation. The fix is to find the character's true peril.
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