Plot armour is good (sometimes) | On Writing

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Tim Hickson
PO Box 69062
Lincoln, 7608
Canterbury, New Zealand

Script by meeeeeeeee
Video edited by Lalit Kumar

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Stay nerdy!
Tim

[HelloFutureMe]

plot armour is bad (almost all the time) — what's the WORST example you've ever seen? comments/like/shares really help! <3 <3

~ Tim

[SleNtRIP]

I think I remember Brandon Sanderson saying in his writing course..."No one cares if coincidence gets your characters into trouble, but it always feels cheap if it gets them out of trouble."
Plot armor is when your character gets out of trouble that should've had some sort of consequence based on the rules you set up.
Great stuff dude! Thanks for the videos!

[lwazinkasawe]

My favourite example of plot armour is Reiner from Attack on Titan. It was really clever, actually. Make a suicidal character and deny him death every single time.

[iurlure]

Better Call Saul is a perfect prequel in that sense. You know that most of the main characters will survive since they're alive in Breaking Bad, but at what cost will they survive? How morally broken will they end up, will they lose their close ones who are not protected by the plot armor?

[colinplaisance]

I always loved how in ATLA while the fire loaded was a huge threat the whole series, the last few episodes were not about will Aang win but will he need to kill Ozai in order to win.

If they hadn’t done that it would’ve had zero real tension

[JamesTullos]

GoT having "zero plot armor" is great for a couple of seasons, but once it developed a core cast of characters that the story was about, they couldn't just kill them with no consequence. If Jon, Daenarys, and Cersei all died in season 5, the story would have nowhere to go. Ergo, the writers suddenly needed to use more plot armor.

[arenkai]

Like everything in writing, plot armour is a tool. It being "good" or "bad" entirely depends on the writer's skill.
For example, Wheel of Time has in-universe plot-armour for some characters explained through the concept of Ta'Veren. Basically, reality bends around some people because they have a purpose to accomplish in the grand Pattern of Ages.
This concept is used to great effect, showing that having plot-armour as a mechanic characters acknowledge can lead to interesting conflict: what do you do when you just want to live a peaceful life but the universe keeps throwing you into life or death battle because that's your "purpose" ?
Or... What do you do when you just want to die and the universe won't allow it ?

[luciferneverchanges]

If arya was stabed once or twice and left to die I could give that the benefit of the doubt but being stabed 20 times and pushed into shit water in a world that doesn't have proper medical treatments is not something that can be overlooked easily.

[cosmicriptid]

They could have just had Arya avoid the assasination better. She caught on at the last second, tried to dodge got a nasty swipe accross her sword arm, and manages to escape. In the next scene, we see it is harder for her to use her sword arm, and especially when running from the waif, it seems extremely stiff. Byt hey, she was trained by the faceless men, and she was already pretty ambidextrous. So it was the character who was underestimating Arya more than the audience.

[RainWelsh]

The “consequences don’t have to mean death” thing is a great thing to remember. I’ve got a character that’s immortal, absolutely cannot die, and at the climax she and a handful of others get trapped in a building by a horde of necromancer-controlled undead. Immortal says something about how much what’s going to happen next is going to suck, and one of her friends says something along the lines of “babes, you can’t die though.”

And immortal just responds with “yeah, so now I get to watch everyone else die while also being ripped into teeny tiny pieces and possibly eaten. But at least I’m going to be alive for the whole thing, I guess.”

You can narratively give someone the ultimate form of plot armour and still give things stakes, you just need a bit of lateral thinking.

[mbanerjee]

Plot armor is fine as long as there are consequences. I think the best example of this is the show "Silicon Valley". The stakes are never life-threatening but for every solution they create, there are anyways unforeseen consequences that help carry the momentum from episode to episode. This is the only comedy I know that doesn't build tension based on romance.

[screeno]

I personally love Rincewind's plot armor in the Discworld books, where it's a canonical thing that not only makes sure he survives everything he goes through, but also constantly draws him into the nearest batch of nonsense.

[sabikikasuko]

7:02 I actually found myself in this very same problem just a few days ago! I was writing a fic in which a character had to fight another that got changed into the perfect killing machine. It was all going perfect until I realized… she was going to fight the perfect killing machine.

I didn't want to try to force her to lose, because it didn't make sense for her to do so. Instead, this character was being controlled by a necklace, and I needed that necklace gone. What I did is that this character is capable of dodging bullets, but the necklace is just hanging. And the protagonist is an expert markswoman. What I did is… not have them fight at all! Instead I had the protagonist ambush the other character and shoot at them, counting on them dodging the shot. They move out of the way, but the necklace falls behind, because inertia XD It separates from the body, the bullet passes right through it, and destroys it, solving the conflict.

It was so satisfying to have solved that, because it sounded like an impossible battle that I'd have to force my protagonist into surviving. And I didn't have to!

[brennanclement]

The coolest use of plot armor I've ever seen was in A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony. The premise of the book is that the main character is exiled from his town for having no magic, and travels across the land to try and find it to return home. Though he had been lucky in escaping dangerous situations throughout the book, towards the end he winds up in a duel with a powerful magician, and luck won't be able to save him this time. The big reveal is that luck continues to save him every time the magician tries to hurt him - that his magical talent is the inability to be harmed by magic. And then after that, the tension is maintained because the magician realizes this and continues the duel by attacking with a mundane sword! Great stuff

[TheRibottoStudios]

I feel like when it comes to PLOT ARMOR one of my favorite aspects of it, is when they just SHATTER that armor entirely. I think you can indeed build up that armor, make some character seem impenetrable, then...SURPISE MF. When well written, that can send shock waves through a fandom. Yu-Gi-Oh did this very well in the Waking the Dragons arc. The Pharaoh from Yu-Gi-Oh had a GREAT amount of plot armor....UNTIL the waking the dragons arc when HIS OWN PRIDE cost him something DEARLY. Yugi's Soul.

Since then much like Korra he is on a MENTAL battle. This man just BREAKS. He doesn't really fully recover until the end of the season. And the reason why he lost is believable because WE'VE SEEN him go too far because of Pride. He nearly kills a man because of his pride. How far fetched is it that he'd be willing to risk his own soul over it? And you start to wonder just how well do you know this person you've spent SEASONS getting to know? It also shows the Pharaoh ISN'T infallible. He screws up. He might have been a mighty king but now....he's just a man....he's just human. And to err is human.

[Sootielove]

I find it fascinating the way plot armour changes with tone and genre. Though one thing that I like to consider in this topic is Squid Game. I heard complaints that the main character had plot armour or that it was unrealistic that the main character would survive such a deadly game (Similar to Katniss in the Hunger Games) Instead of plot armour or the main character surviving to the end because he's the protagonist, he's the protagonist because he survived. Reframing deadly situations in that sense can help adjust perspective on plot armour

[SingingSealRiana]

The most imported thing to keep tension and the viewer/reader buy into your reality is often consequences. Plot armor fatigue does not happen because your character is overly competent or nothing ever happens to them, but when something happens to them, there are no consequences. If you let them get injured, commit to that or give a really good excuse that did not come out of nowhere but makes atleast when rereading sense. You do not need to kill people all the time, but when you do, make it count. Fullmetal alchemist (brotherhood) expertly showed how a more or less sidecharacter death can still be relevant near the end of the series just by going realisticly through the consequences. People grief, people remember, if you play your cards right you get immense tension out of it without overdramatising and needing to threaten the whole damned world every weak.
If you revive people, do something with that, like the horror that is berics existence or well in fmab. . . .
People do survive the unlikeliest things, just do not be careless with it.
Honestly the biggest apeal for me in got wasy the psychological realism grrm gave hiss characters. No matter if they survived something or whatever, everything that happens had realistic consequences

[Skip]

I love how on every “on writing” video uses Avatar or Korra as examples of good writing. It’s just so amazingly good (season 2 of Korra excepted). We are truly lucky to have gotten it in our lifetimes

[BioshadowX]

If you haven't already, you should absolutely read the manga "Ajin" (do not watch the anime though). Its characters' (well most of them), literally can't die (that's the starting point of the story), immediately establishes all the rules of the universe (how death works, how reanimation works. Etc) and goes absolutely batshit insane with how creative they play within the rules, especially the villian. All while having absolutely incredible tensions for literal fates worth than death for the main character and for ordinary civilians

[CM-hpnk]

Got to protest against using Luke as an example of inconsistent behaviour - it isn't inconsistent at all. In fact, it's exactly in line with the journey Luke goes on, mirroring Anakin's except for the fact that Luke 1) realises the Jedi were fundamentally wrong about attachments (and this is what caused Anakin's downfall) 2) Luke is able to see what he'll become if he does kill his father. Luke does not go on a kill-crazy rampage slaughtering sand-people in an act of genocidal vengeance. He DOES use the force for defense, and not attack. To stop himself from killing his father at the last moment after giving in to his rage is ENTIRELY consistent with his established arc and journey. Otherwise, I love the video.