: Re: 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.

@Holmes449

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It sounds like you want the readers to genuinely believe the character is in jeopardy, including potentially lethal jeopardy.

To accomplish this, you need a story where people can die, so I'd say you need to kill off at least one other character.

You also need to establish that suitably bad things can happen to this particular character and perhaps even things that happen and can potentially get worse (e.g. an arm is injured during a swordfight and it looks to be potentially infected, putting the entire arm or their life at risk).

You essentially need to show the reader that people can die and bad things can happen to characters, and you need to point a 'gun' at this character in a way that's potentially less dangerous than a 'gun' that's already gone off pointed at another character.

Thirdly, you'll need to do your best to ensure that the average reader has no idea that you're giving a particular character special treatment in terms of focused attention in the story - if a reader catches on that this is a 'pet character', the threat is empty.

Of course, you should also call into question the reasons you might be wanting this scenario in the first place - is it for shock value? Is there a better way of achieving this effect? Does your story require this twist? etc.

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