: 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.

@Kaufman555

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So, if I got this right, you want your main character to be "The Great War Hero" who commands the respect of his men for his "heroic" deeds in the past great war.

One way I would suggest this is to have the story set in the future where he is in command and a new Ensign (sorry, I'm a Trekie, so new Ensign on the ship is a general starting point). Ensign Neo Guy is on the ship and learns The Captain is the great War Hero known far and wide as "The Hero of (insert famous battle here)" or some such nickname. Ensign Guy refers to The Captain by his nickname and the bridge crew falls silent. The Captain says he prefers not to be called that, or outright dismisses the notion that he's as important as his nickname implies and leaves it at that. Later, in the mess, Ensign Guy is approached by the XO, who happened to be in the very same battle and fought alongside the great war hero and saw everything. He'll tell you the real story.

This is where your story comes into play... We have X number of characters in the unit, not including the young XO. As the reader, we know that the XO is going to live, but he's not the protaganist... he's the POV. If you only refer to the protaganist as "The Captain" or "The War Hero" than you now have a scenario where one of the X characters is the young Captain... but since he doesn't hold that rank, he'll never be referred to as such. Since this is the start of the action that will earn him his fame, he isn't yet referred to as "The Hero". You as the writer know who he is, but to the reader, it's one of these characters from the XO's story... and our mystery is who do we think will be the Captain.

Re-Rank to flavor.

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