If you’ve never heard this term, it basically means that the character is always magically saved from consequences through wildly unrealistic and strange means. Whether that’s suddenly meeting a wise guru who gives them a solution, an enemy changing their mind and sparing the MC, or a freak accident that turns out as a blessing in disguise, too much plot armor and characters start to feel like little dolls rather than real people.
Now, I will admit that I enjoy some books with impenetrable plot armor. Danmei is notorious for this shtick, and I like danmei novels because I get to shut my brain off and be merrily led along.
Do these books have reread value? Not really. I enjoy them, but I don’t feel the need to luxuriate in them again. I don’t think much about these books when I’m done with them, other than perhaps envisioning non-plot-armored scenarios for the characters.
Plot armor often goes along with Mary Sues. The MC is the strongest and greatest and bestest ever who everyone loves and wants to save even after trying to kill them in the last chapter. Childish writing, fun for a little bit, but exhausting eventually.
You can write a book with plot armor if you want; it can, indeed, be fun. I can’t tell you what to do. But I can warn you that in certain genres, like literary fantasy (my specialty), it’s heavily frowned upon and you’ll be ripped apart.
So let’s see how to untangle that plot armor and create exciting consequences.
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Ensure that danger is survivable based on the realities of the world.
Anyone who is on ground level within a 1-mile radius of a nuclear bomb detonation is going to die. There is no ifs, ands, or buts about that. They will be instantly vaporized due to the extreme heat and force unless they are in extremely, extremely specific circumstances, such as locked in a very deep bank vault that is reinforced with heavy metals.
Those within a five-mile radius will almost certainly die of radiation sickness, with only a scant few survivors who will be crippled for life. It is a gruesome, horrific death that is possibly one of the most painful things a person can suffer. And everyone within a 10-mile radius will suffer some sort of damage, whether that is broken bones from flying debris or third-degree burns over the majority of their body.
Having a character walk away unscathed from an air burst right above their heads is physically impossible. Readers will think you are stupid if you have a character crouch under a desk and then get up like nothing happened.
There are subtler versions of this, though, like having a character get pressed half to death and not suffer any long-term effects, or managing to talk their way out of a hostage situation with a world-renowned assassin.
Am I saying you can never ever have these kinds of miracles? I’m not. I can’t tell you what to do with your writing; you can have a million of them if you want. But readers will lose trust in you pretty fast, especially if several miracles occur in rapid succession.
To avoid accusations of plot armor, consider whether an injury or circumstance is survivable for the average person. People survive getting shot all the time, depending on how trained the shooter was and where the bullets penetrated. People have survived strokes, or heart attacks, or poisonings. They will have consequences (more on that later), but they can function.
This goes for fantasy settings as well. If you have insisted that one spell will absolutely, positively, certainly kill someone if it is cast correctly, then welp, that person has to die when they’re faced with a highly skilled spellcaster. Irreversible poisons are irreversible. Being in direct fire of a dragon is fatal. And so on and so on.
Since you are the one who created the rules for your world, your readers must trust that you will follow them. Constantly reversing course and hunting down loopholes makes readers lose interest. They may keep reading just because they want to see how many more of your own rules you break and roll their eyes at their ridiculousness. But they likely won’t want to read more of your work because they already know the jist: the character will survive anything and end up in a happily ever after.
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Give the character a real flaw, not just a pratfall.
Don’t get me wrong: pratfalls are fun. These are little annoying habits or minor deficiencies, like not being able to cook or always having to make a bad joke. But if your character only has pratfalls, they may very well be a Mary Sue.
Realistic characters have fatal flaws. This could be laziness, a bad attitude, or excessive pride (looking at you, Mr. Uileac Korviridi). The fatal flaw gets them into trouble that other characters would easily bypass, but that they simply can’t because of who they are.
The interesting thing is that a character deficiency can become a strength in another circumstance. For example, a stubborn character can beat their head against the wall trying to solve a problem themselves. They could also be persistent in a circumstance where everyone else gave up, resulting in a well-earned victory. It’s the same trait but framed differently depending on the context.
Whatever conflict you choose, make sure it will grind against the character’s Jenga Block: their essential personality trait that determines how they move in the world. This molds the plot around the character rather than dragging them along without agency.
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Demonstrate – and utilize – a character’s primary skill.
There are few things more annoying to me than when an author says a character is really good at something and then never shows them doing that thing. Every problem gets solved through some other means, possibly because the writer doesn’t know much about that particular topic.
If you are not intimately familiar with your subject matter, then read up on it more. You should not make up everything even if you are in fantasy or scifi. Keep things a little vague so you don’t constantly get called out for being stupid, but show us the character using the tools you already gave them.
Cerie Korviridi is a High Poet. Once she undergoes the Sigillum ritual, we see her using High Poetry to solve things. Not every problem that comes her way – otherwise High Poetry becomes a Mary Sue skill – but enough to keep peoples’ interest (I hope).
I, unlike some people who use poetry magic (cough cough), am a poet. I know poetry very well because I’ve been writing it for over 20 years. Writing the poems throughout the series – there will be over 100! – is a genuine pleasure for me, so I have no problem sharing them.
So whatever important skill that your character has, use it. This reduces plot armor because we can see that the character is equipped for the challenges they face.
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Spread competency amongst multiple characters.
As I said before, plot armor is often closely associated with Mary Sues because the main character is somehow able to do everything they could possibly need to survive. They’re a healer, a fighter, a scholar, a schemer, and incredibly charismatic. Everyone wants to help them, so any issues they face are easily solved because they’re so special.
When we always know that a character will pull through mostly unscathed, then we lose interest. It’s impossible for them to fail because they just need to use one of their seven thousand skills.
But the story gets more interesting when someone else has the skills they need. Now the main character must build alliances, negotiate, and compromise. The other character could refuse to help at a pivotal moment, or be unavailable, or simply not have quite the level of skill required. We don’t know how they will react, but we do know that there will be conflict involved in extracting this utility.
My Plot Mountain method, which is mostly geared toward quest-type narratives, emphasizes that each member of the main cast should have a competency and a reason for being there. They may be a healer, a mystic, a badass knight, whatever. These strengths should be explained early on, before there is any danger, so that we’re familiar with what each character can do.
By highlighting their competencies, we are not surprised when they come up with a solution for a problem. This also prevents the issue of when characters randomly are able to save the day when no one ever suggested they were capable of that.
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Ensure proper foreshadowing to avoid lucky breaks.
One common issue with plot armor is that lucky breaks come out of nowhere. There’s no logical reason for the protagonist to receive this reward; it was never hinted at or discussed.
For example, someone will magically hear a rumor that something works in a highly specific way that readers never would have guessed, and it just so happens to work that way several pages later. Or when a character is on the brink of death, someone just so happens to have a magical elixer that solves everything.
You can have these sudden reversals without being accused of plot armor – as long as the solution to the problem was hinted at earlier, and the character only needs to act on the information they already have.
In my next book, Absent All Light (coming June 23, 2026), Cerie gets into a sticky spot and needs healing from another High Poet. She does not randomly stumble onto a High Poet while in the wilderness; her mentor, Irith, mentioned an ally in the general area where Cerie was headed.
This way, Cerie goes, “Hey, Irith said something about a High Poet around here,” and they set off to find her. While it does end up fortuitous, Cerie knew that poet was nearby, so finding her was the logical choice.
If your character ends up being saved by a mysterious character, mention them earlier. If there’s a magical tool that fixes things, have it discussed in passing but dismissed. Readers will logically assume the Chekov’s Gun principle and guess that the info will be useful later. They’re then satisfied by the solution, even though they weren’t sure when it would become relevant.
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Ensure several coincidences lead to terrible outcomes.
Plot armor characters are notorious for their interesting coincidences that always help them out. These happenstance encounters never have bad repercussions and neatly solve whatever the problem was so they don’t have to think about it again.
But coincidences become more interesting when we don’t know whether they will be helpful or harmful.
Let me give you an example of an awkward coincidence. I had a pretty weird and uncomfortable breakup with an ex who attended a university halfway across the state. By unfortunate chance, I ran into this ex at a restaurant while I was in town for a conference.
Neither of us expected to see one another; it’s a relatively large city, and we had not been in contact for months. Being the big coward I am, I had my friends pack up my food, ran back to the conference site, and ate my greasy noodles in stoic silence while everyone stared at me.
You could have your character run into an enemy while they’re out shopping, or they miss a bus and end up getting caught in a massive firefight. Wrong place and wrong time situations are far more interesting than right place, right time.
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Victories should include both benefits and consequences.
High-stakes stories are interesting not because we think the protagonist is going to die if they don’t succeed, but because we suspect that there will be other issues that arise from the resolution. Things aren’t tied up with a neat bow, and there are tragic losses that can’t be reversed.
The hero may live, but the love interest dies. The world is saved, but thousands lost everything during the war. The dragon is dead, but it was so aggressive because it was guarding a clutch of eggs, and now everyone’s fighting about whether to kill the eggs too.
We typically expect that the protagonist is going to limp through the end because that is who we are following throughout the story. The story ends if the MC dies, unless there are multiple POVs. But everyone else is fair game, and the protagonist’s actions can have consequences we would not have expected.
And sometimes what we thought was a happy ending was actually a Phyrric victory. The protagonist loses so much of what is dear to them that, while the campaign was a success on paper, it feels more like a defeat. They may lose their agency, their sanity, their relationships and loved ones; everything they truly cared about is gone because they chose to pursue this endeavor.
My seventh book, Shadow and Sword, is very much what I am calling a consequences book. It is all about the fallout from the sixth book, which had a world-changing climax (yes really). Because the climax was so intense, I needed a whole other book to untangle all those threads.
As I am coming to learn, consequence books are extremely hard to write, which is likely why so many people refuse to do them. Building a new conflict on top of the old one requires some ingenuity, and I can’t constantly rehash the old plot or people will get bored. Still, I love being challenged, so I’m excited to dive in and explore all the loose threads from the sixth book, Poesy.
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Avoid “damsel in distress” syndrome by letting the character save themselves sometimes.
Contary to the name, both male and female characters can be damsels in distress. Danmei novels, being primarily focused on gay relationships, typically have a damsel and a savior, though sometimes the situations reverse throughout the book.
This endless loop of saving and being saved gets annoying after a bit. Yes, sometimes a character will be utterly helpless and need someone else to swoop in – Orrinir’s sort of a damsel in the next book – but they should at least try to self-rescue.
Not only does this make it more interesting, but it also demonstrates agency and assures us that this MC was a good choice as a protagonist. A completely passive character doesn’t inspire sympathy, nor do we feel particularly bonded to them. If we wanted to see a lazy louch, we’d just open Facebook and watch people bitch about the problems they created.
If their self-rescue fails, then we see they don’t have plot armor. This is then a good opportunity to use the rest of your main cast to fix the problem, showing that the MC doesn’t have everything they need to succeed and must rely on others.
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Again, I’m not saying you can’t write a book with zero plot armor. In fact, I’m not saying you have to do anything at all. I’m not the ultimate truth in writing. Armored protagonists can be useful if that is something readers want; maybe they, like me, sometimes just want to be led along by the nose.
But other readerships are much more resistant to plot armor. They will complain if your characters never have problems, never suffer consequences, and always have the perfect solution. Knowing who you’re writing for and what kind of story you want to tell will ensure you satisfy your ideal audience while also building a more complex narrative.
