Plot Armour and the Deus ex Machina

Note: One or two minor spoilers for `Toofy' and `Tauli' (Chapter Two), ahead. Nothing major.

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One of the harder tools to use in the writer's toolbox is the deus ex machina.

To put it simply, it's a device wherein the unsolvable or impossible task is suddenly and easily solved, surprising the reader, and generally solving the crisis in a way that can bring the tale to a happy ending.

I say that it is one of the harder tools to use, because it doesn't come with satisfaction guaranteed. If you don't spell out enough limits on why it wasn't used before, you end up with people deriding Tolkien for not just using the eagles (even though he explained why they couldn't), and other similar things that the public views as a gaping plot hole, even if it isn't.

If you use it too frequently, then it becomes an expected thing. If you expect it, then the device doesn't work. It will leave you hungry for more and bored.

If you haven't laid enough breadcrumbs pointing out that it might technically be possible, then the audience isn't just surprised - they're confused. It takes them right out of the narrative, whether or not they're aware that the immersion has been broken, and however you follow it up, the reader is going to be disappointed.

All in all, the deus ex machina is a dangerous writer's tool, and you're as like as not to cut yourself with it.

In the conclusion to Toofy, I used the device. I think I may have just scraped by, as the nature of the individual deployed as my deus ex machina was erratic. She was introduced as being so crazy that everyone was scared of her.

I think I did so because of the question that a reader asks themselves when you present them with a crisis.

"How is Toofy going to manage to get out of this one?"

The deus ex machina is the answer, when the answer to the question is, "She can't. Not by herself."

Which brings us nicely round to the second plot device that I want to discuss, and think is inherently linked to the deployment of the deus ex machina.

Plot Armour.

This one is simple. Readers have an expectation that though not every character is wearing it, there are particular characters that the author can only badly traumatise or maim. They're not allowed to outright kill off particular individuals.

Note that in the above question, the readers asks themselves `how' the character is going to escape. They don't ask themselves `if' they can get out of the crisis.

An author is allowed to force a character through a dark time, to show growth. What an author is generally not expected to do, by their audience, is to take someone that they have fallen in love with... And discard them.

Oh, you can make the grand gesture. The main character is allowed, and sometimes expected, to make the ultimate sacrifice. You can kill them, if it saves the rest of the world. That's all good and dandy, because it gels so nicely with the expected curve of the story's plot.

However, what you're absolutely not expected to do, is to have the villain, or circumstances or whatever, simply walk up to the main character and stick a knife in them.

If you twist that particular knife, and end the life of a major character in so crass a way, then the reader is looking for the deus ex machina. They're expecting that the character will die off-screen, or in some other reversible way.

"They're not really dead, are they?"

Spoiler-free, Tauli's first couple chapters is one of my attempts to twist the knife. When it comes to writing my tales I have as many issues putting down any of my characters as the villain does.

If a novel cannot survive the plot armour coming off from the main party, then the tale is not so interesting to me. There are times, like Matthew Reilly's Seven Ancient Wonders, where the main cast having plot armour is part of the fun of the tale. Other narratives, like MacGuyver, are well suited to it.

The movie `Serenity' gets a bit of flack for running the spear through the wash. However, it was that small moment that tells the watcher that this is the final climax. That though the story will probably come to a satisfying conclusion, you have absolutely no idea how many of the main cast will make it through to the other side. Book made a sacrifice, which motivated the cast, but it Wash's death that tells you that things have reached `fucked up'. So when Zoe loses control, or River gets separated, or Kaylee and Simon go down... You have no idea if any of them will get back up again.

It is when you take the plot armour off your main party that you can raise the stakes to a level that a reader is not used to. Not comfortable with. You have to be careful with the knife, as careful as when you play with the deus ex machina.

A lot of TV series, over the years, have taken the armour off as an excuse to recast. You kill off most of the old, introduce the new team, and only have one or two people to tide people through the transition. Most of the time... It stinks. Often a turning point into drudgery, for the writing of the show.

With Tauli, I have done that, to a certain extent. There is a new cast, but I have done what I can to try and preserve the status quo. That is to say, the new cast isn't completely new. I've salved the wound by elevating characters who were both secondary and expected to become primary at some point.

I've also eased into it, as best I can, by having most of the remaining characters transformed in some way. This is a little bit of writing trickery. By transforming a character, giving them new motivations, you hope to get the reader caught up in the emotion of that transformation, so that they're less aware of the rug you've yanked out from underneath them.

Again, it's a common writing technique. Often deployed in TV, and... Badly. I'm sure all of us can think of a time our favourite character was sent bumbling down the path to darkness and villainhood because someone they cared about was killed off.

The key, I think, to the reader not feeling out that trope and becoming bored or distracted by it, is to make sure that it's happening in among hell and brimstone.

It's fine to transform the character, so long as it isn't the most dramatic thing that is currently happening.

Don't just kill a main character, transform an old, and introduce a new one. Whilst you're doing that, why not also blow up the entire landscape? The eternal kingdom of King Arthur should fall at the same time you bury Merlin for good. Don't just break Thor's hammer and put him on his knees, destroy the whole of Asgard. Take away his reason for fighting.

Put the reader in the position where they're hoping for a deus ex machina, but they're no longer expecting one. Crush their shining little hopes into broken fragments until there is nothing left. Hand them a Red Wedding. Only then, can you start to rebuild.

There are, of course, other ways of handling the removal of plot armour from main characters. There are also plenty of tales where no one has any, to begin with.

With my own writing, no one has any. A phrase you'll find repeated early on in `Toofy' is "Anyone can die, at any time." The problem is, as you grow the power curve, people expect the armour does exist, more and more. So sometimes you need to sharpen the knife a little.

Why did Kaleid have to die, in Toofy? It wasn't to inspire Trician. It was to remind the reader that when it comes to lists of the dead, my stories come with their own memorials. That the nature of the world is cruel, unforgiving, and without mercy.

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In short, both the tools of plot armour and the deus ex machina are dangerous, and come with a series of expectations of when they're allowed and not allowed. They're a temptation for a writer, but you're probably going to cut yourself if you use them.

However, in using them, you need to bear in mind that the two concepts are inextricably linked to each other. Knowingly or not, a reader will consider one, when the other is deployed. To keep a reader engaged, you need to balance the two of them, side-by-side.

But just because the tool is difficult, should not mean that you don't reach for it.