Immortality for the main character

Right well I've written my main character as a magic using goofball who like the rest of his family have the fourth degree of immortality each time they die they resume life in a clone of themselves that they prepare. Most of them not being that adventurous only need one clone they die and respawn than make another. This guy being incredibly unlucky has created thousands upon thousands of his body and lived far past anyone's normal lifespan. He's seen mountains erode to plains and experienced a great deal of life. There are solid ways of killing him like sucking his soul out and the like but I fear that his immortality makes him boring as he has little reason to worry about any battle he gets into.

I did provide emotional trauma behind him like he has no friends because he outlives any of them and thus is only friends with others who are immortal but I feel as though he still lacks conflict.

You could make it something like Slice of Life. It doesn't have to be solely fighting and combat. Handling any character well, especially Reality Warpers and immortals involves making the character feel like a human being. Focus on your character's personality. If he's been around long enough to see mountains erode into plains, explore how that's affected his personality, his worldview, his interactions with not just people, but occurrences and the things he is around to see. How do others see him, even if they're just insignificant little blips in the context of his life? There's a lot of ways this can go.

"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."

In two of the novels I am writing, there is a single shared character. He is the protagonist of the first novel, but dies at the end. He is a secondary character in the second novel, which takes place more than 1 400 years later. Technically it's not immortality since he's already dead, but he's kind of half alive, too.

Getting to the point, what I've done to make it interesting is give this character a reason to live, even if a half-hearted motivation.

Make long-term goals for your character or create problems that take a long ass time to arise and a long ass time to quell. Jennifer and Gordon: Defenders of the Earth or some shit.

edited 2nd Aug '11 9:32:56 PM by MechaJesus

I'm going to assume that you've already got other aspects of characterization down since you asked for help with this one, so here's my advice:

Ignore it.

No, seriously, ignore it. Just because you're not afraid to die doesn't make you unafraid of pain.

More practically, he's immortal but not indestructible. He'll be very good at what he does , but you've already said it's not like respawns in Counterstrike and no matter how skilled you can't overcome enough weight of numbers, surprise, or other advantages accrued to your opponent. Maybe he can only be "mission killed" as the phrase goes, but it costs him time and denies his presence in the area for however long it takes to travel and construct another replacement body.

Simply because you come back from being killed does not prevent people from raising all hell in your absence. Why you're not there doesn't matter; what matters is that you're not.

Nous restons ici.

All good points I wanted to ask how should I go about revealing that he's immortal because although it's a part of his character having him not be able to die feels sort of like a cop out, like the villain strikes him down and than he just wakes up somewhere else and explains that he can't die or what?

Wait, a villain?

Okay, what type of immortality does your protagonist have, for starters?

And about this villain- perhaps you could make this villain already know the protagonist's immortal through some way or other.

As you work with this protagonist, remember that there will be logistics unique to immortality involved- he will probably end up Walking the Earth because if he stays in one place for too long, people are bound to wonder after a certain point why he's not aging.

"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."

Well first off his immortality works by him taking a bit of his dna (blood or flesh not hair or nails) and sending magic into it to grow into a body. The body is his but lacks his soul. When he dies his soul heads to the latest body and he resumes activity which takes him a few minutes. He can teleport to where he died but only as long as he knows where he died (can't teleport where you don't know about which is why he doesn't just pop into to the villain's place). He made sure to put a bit of his blood and flesh on ice from each year (in case he wanted a younger or older body for the moment and if he has a younger body he can produce more and more bodies of that age). Most of his enemies aren't sure how he survives what they put him through which he usually lies and says it's because brillant, the ones that know better use alternative methods (just trapping him or capturing his soul).

Also with his walking the earth deal he usually just secludes himself. Like in the beginning he just stays in a ancient castle most don't visit and any that do he scares off.

So it's essentially Type IV Immortality, in other words.

...What was your question again? How to handle your villain and the immortality?

What does this villain have against your immortal, anyways?

"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."

Eh yeah it's fourth degree immortality I think I said that in the beginning. I'm wondering how it's should be done, how I can explain that the whole time he's been immortal without it sounding like a cop out. Also the villain is complicated. He's told that in order to reach his goals (he's a king just doing what his people want him to do which is killing all monsters (fantasy setting) he doesn't care either way but it's what his people want so he does it) he needs to stop someone called Jack. So he puts a bounty out for a guy named Jack. Jack happens to get hurt and he decides to get revenge on him for attacking him for no apparent reason.

Just to be clear, before I go on, you want to find some way to reveal to the reader that the protagonist's immortal?

"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."

Yes without it seeming like a cop out.

Without sounding like a cop-out?

When I think of cop-outs in fiction, I think of things that the author hastily threw in there without thinking for the purpose of facilitating something. Many uses of 11th-Hour Superpower that don't make a whole lot of sense in the context of the big picture are generally seen by some as a cop-out because the hero could've theoretically found some other way to do whatever they had to do without the power.

Immortality is typically not something that an inexperienced writer throws onto their character at the last minute. Waiting to reveal the immortality to the reader until the villain comes along would be a cop-out. There are many ways to reveal this early on. One way I'd do it is have this guy walk past some kind of a landform, such as a coastline or where a mountain range was or something, and maybe reminisce about all he's seen. If he's been around long enough to see mountains vanish into plains (which isn't really possible*

) the thought of his life has to enter his head every now and again.

Explore the topic in the narrative. If you're writing in third person limited, think about how your immortal would approach the topic of immortality. Find some way to reveal it before any foreseeable major conflicts, and there shouldn't be any problems.

"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."

wait what's illogical about mountains eroding into plains.

Read the hottip.

Ah yes. I'm no geography buff (I really got to be one at some field) but I think river drying up (or whatever you call that where mud from upper stream does the work...) would make more sense.

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

hot tip?

You know, this:*

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

Ah I see perhaps it would be more interesting to say the reverse. I wrote that the immortal guy and his brothers would find places that were going to rise up and planted flags on top of them ahead of time.

It's simple. Give the immortal character two things. An overarching goal and most importantly, a challenge. Just because you're immortal does not mean you are unstoppable. Sure an ant that could never die could keep coming back to bite your exposed feet, but what would it really accomplish by doing so? Nothing. An immortal character needs an opponent who can do (or at least successfully threaten) the next best thing from killing him. Neutralize him.

I've got new mythological machinery, and very handsome supernatural scenery. Goodfae: a mafia web serial

Well good he has those two. His goal is to get revenge and the challenge is that he's out for revenge against someone who commands armies big enough to worry Jack a little.

Alright thanks everyone this has been really helpful. Thread closed