Current Events > "Plot armor" is such a silly concept.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Oh, your hero didn't die? They had plot armor to keep them alive.

Like, what's supposed to happen? Should they kill the hero off mid-movie and spend the rest of the film on what happens after the villain has won?

Sure. Thatd actually be sorta fresh.

The best stories are the ones where no-one is safe

---

Sometimes, yes. The better way to do it is make it so the hero lives through something that's not plot armour. Like, if a bomb explodes in their face, don't be like "oh he suddenly got the teleportation ability and got out", make it "oh, there's this power that was alluded to at the beginning of this movie/season that fits in with his existing ability and gave him skin tough enough to not die, but he's still fucked up for the rest of the season".

---

YourLovelyTina posted...

The best stories are the ones where no-one is safe

except those don't exist, the best you'll get is a character is lead to believe isn't a side character dies. Or if it's a television show, someone doesn't renew their contract and they work around that.

---

FortuneCookie posted...

Oh, your hero didn't die? They had plot armor to keep them alive.

Like, what's supposed to happen? Should they kill the hero off mid-movie and spend the rest of the film on what happens after the villain has won?

I mean the villain doesn't have to win just because he kills the hero. Sometimes the story just continues regardless and someone else kills the villain.

Like in Transformers the movie. The real one not the fake Michael Bay shit.

---

YourLovelyTina posted...

The best stories are the ones where no-one is safe

The problem with that is that, once the audience learns that everyone is expendable, they learn not to get attached to them. It severs any emotional connection that the audience could have with the story.

It's criticizing bad story telling with a lack of actual threat and no consequences. It's entirely dependent of the tone of the story. Something like Taken series has no real risks to the main character. You know he's a superhuman badass who will tank anything and everything no matter how goofy. Something like shounen anime where they use cliffhangers abundant, tons of death flags, tons of fake outs, etc, it gets damn old. Fairy Tail is one of the worst modern ones where I can think of where a character almost dies like six times, literally dies once, and is still alive at the end of the series. Though like every trope, it can easily be misused.

https://youtu.be/pO20qU-VwgA?t=53

---

3PiesAndAFork posted...

Sometimes, yes. The better way to do it is make it so the hero lives through something that's not plot armour. Like, if a bomb explodes in their face, don't be like "oh he suddenly got the teleportation ability and got out", make it "oh, there's this power that was alluded to at the beginning of this movie/season that fits in with his existing ability and gave him skin tough enough to not die, but he's still fucked up for the rest of the season".

A lot of people would still write that off as plot armor.

---

Mistere Man posted...

https://youtu.be/pO20qU-VwgA?t=53

I knew before clicking what moment it was gonna be.

It is true though. Those film serials had some cop-outs. Like, this one time a woman went over a waterfall in a speedboat. She let out a scream before going over. Then, in the next chapter, we see her competently leaping out of the speedboat before it goes over - no screaming.

The best is The Shadow serial. Half the cliffhangers are simply him getting up and walking away after the building has blown up or whatever.

FortuneCookie posted...

Like, what's supposed to happen? Should they kill the hero off mid-movie and spend the rest of the film on what happens after the villain has won?

Sure. Or on who steps up to take the hero's place, or on how the hero's allies continue the mission, or whatever.

---

Maybe don't have them face odds and survive where they otherwise wouldn't without said plot armour.

---

KeeperOfShadows posted...

A lot of people would still write that off as plot armor.

They'd be wrong.

Plot armor is usually in reference to unthinkable odds against one character which otherwise can't be explained.

---

Honestly, I'd say the issue is less the idea of plot armor itself and more the belief that plot armor is inherently bad writing. It's just as legitimate a storytelling tool as any other. What matters more is how well it's executed.

And yeah, there are a lot of stories that use it poorly, but that is a flaw of the writing, not the concept.

---

The classic example of plot armor is James Bond in Goldfinger.

Goldfinger informs Bond after finally catching him about his plan to spread neurotoxin gas over fort knox so he can just walk in and take all the gold. The plan goes off without a hitch. Only for all the Fort Knox guards to get back up during the middle of the robbery and arrest Goldfinger where in James Bond reappears revealing that before any of that happened he seduced Pussy Galore and got her to reveal his plan, sabotage the gas to be harmless, and convinced all the guards of Fort Knox to pretend die long enough to trap Goldfinger.

---

FortuneCookie posted...

The problem with that is that, once the audience learns that everyone is expendable, they learn not to get attached to them. It severs any emotional connection that the audience could have with the story.

Everyone got turned off from the Walking Dead once some major charcters got killed off.

3PiesAndAFork posted...

Sometimes, yes. The better way to do it is make it so the hero lives through something that's not plot armour. Like, if a bomb explodes in their face, don't be like "oh he suddenly got the teleportation ability and got out",

What you're referring to here is Deus Ex Machina
The two might be related, but they're not the same


---

Tyranthraxus posted...

The classic example of plot armor is James Bond in Goldfinger.

Goldfinger informs Bond after finally catching him about his plan to spread neurotoxin gas over fort knox so he can just walk in and take all the gold. The plan goes off without a hitch. Only for all the Fort Knox guards to get back up during the middle of the robbery and arrest Goldfinger where in James Bond reappears revealing that before any of that happened he seduced Pussy Galore and got her to reveal his plan, sabotage the gas to be harmless, and convinced all the guards of Fort Knox to pretend die long enough to trap Goldfinger.

I can't imagine what could possibly have gone wrong with a plan like that.

Plot armor is a result of bad writing. You can have it so the hero survives in ways that make sense, rather than the writer having to bullshit their way out of a situation where the hero has no plausible way to escape.

---

FortuneCookie posted...

Should they kill the hero off mid-movie and spend the rest of the film on what happens after the villain has won?

sure. or have someone else be the protagonist

---

YourLovelyTina posted...

The best stories are the ones where no-one is safe

Stories like this can be interesting but all too often it turns into something more like a game where the only reason you're watching/playing/reading is to see who dies next, and that's gimmicky bad storytelling

Anyway op, there's a happy medium. If a character needs to survive for a story to be told then make that calculation to keep them alive, but ff your story is constantly throwing its hero/heroes into implausible situations where they by all rights should have died if you think about it for half a second, it's probably a trashy story. That isn't automatically unfun necessarily and like the death-pool idea it can be entertaining, but it's not good storytelling.

---

https://youtu.be/uK49md8yAzU

ultimate reaver posted...

Stories like this can be interesting but all too often it turns into something more like a game where the only reason you're watching/playing/reading is to see who dies next, and that's gimmicky bad storytelling

Anyway op, there's a happy medium. If a character needs to survive for a story to be told then make that calculation to keep them alive, but ff your story is constantly throwing its hero/heroes into implausible situations where they by all rights should have died if you think about it for half a second, it's probably a trashy story. That isn't automatically unfun necessarily and like the death-pool idea it can be entertaining, but it's not good storytelling.

Death porn. I find them to be unintentionally hilarious. The Final Destination movies is one of my favorite comedy series.

No, write a believable way for the hero to overcome the obstacle.

Plot armor is used for when they overcome something for a contrived out of the blue reason.

Its called good writing

---

FortuneCookie posted...

The problem with that is that, once the audience learns that everyone is expendable, they learn not to get attached to them. It severs any emotional connection that the audience could have with the story.

Not true. You can still get attached to characters with good writing. The knowledge that everyone is expendable just creates really tense moments. Because you know it could happen, but you don't know when it will happen. Game of Thrones was great at that tension, it's a shame the final season was such garbage.

An example of bad plot armor is in the game Far Cry 5. In it, you take on 4 siblings that run a cult. The plot armor is that (spoilers) you get captured 2 times each by 3 of the siblings (6 times total). Even if you've already killed their other siblings, they monologue at you, then let you go, like it's nothing. Yet everyone else they capture, gets killed or brainwashed the very first time. The player is the only person to go free, simply because they are the player character.

---

YourLovelyTina posted...

The best stories are the ones where no-one is safe

This was the driving line behind A Song of Ice and Fire. It was incredible, compelling storytelling. If only George RR Martin wasn't a fucking hack.

---

randy_123r posted...

yep, or make the hero's attempt at avoiding death believable

Yeah those are about the only two options. Daredevil season 3 did a pretty good job of this, when Daredevil gets drugged and has the shit kicked out of him, barely escaping with his life
That was pretty believable imo

---

I think you're missing the point TC. While main characters dying can be cool, the opposition to "Plot Armor" is when you put main characters in situations were they really really should die and ONLY don't because they are relevant to the plot

Picking video games as example the sheer amount of important character helicopter crash survivors is insane

Either have actual risks or don't write the hero into situations were they can die only to not have the balls to do it

---

It describes a scenario wherein a character survives a situation in a way that feels cheap and contrived. This most frequently occurs when a writer writes themselves into a corner by putting their protagonist in a ridiculous situation and then contrives some BS hand-wavey way for them to survive or escape with minimal consequences.
You don't even necessarily have to kill off characters, just so long as they suffer some realistic consequence.
Certain genres have more leeway than others, of course (action heroes, for example, are generally assumed to be superhuman even when they aren't explicitly superhuman), but you generally still want the reader/viewer to feel there are stakes of some kind.