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Underground > Creation >

Writing Godlike Characters

Tamayyurt

01:19 / 14.01.03

I've just written a story where the main character at the end becomes, what could be called divine or enlightened (through artificial means, like by stimulating the God Spot with electromagnetic pulses).

Several people have read it and loved the story, but they find the end a bit anticlimactic. Now I could either do two things, I can go the easy way or and add tension by making the enlightenment not all it's cracked up to be or I could keep the sentiment of my story intact just give the end more punch.

So, um, do any of you have any suggestions?

mixmage

01:45 / 14.01.03

A friend of mine wrote a story where the main protagonist gets his Godlike abilities pretty much right after the intro. The whole story is about what he does with it. I thought it rocked, even with the destroying/rebuilding of the universe part.

Keep your original sentiment. How can "becoming a God" be an anticlimax? errr... make that a rhetorical question, just to keep the thread on topic.

Tamayyurt

03:28 / 14.01.03

yeah, but in that story it's about being divine. Mine is about the evolution towards it... I just need to make the final leap a bigger one. But I don't know how.

Tezcatlipoca

06:45 / 14.01.03

Hmmm...years ago I included a pretty savage rape scene in one of my books, and wanted to use it to cause the reader to become as hostile as possible towards the rapist. After much writing and rewriting I finally found the best way to portray the revulsion I wanted as to cut the rape scene entirely and write the aftermath of it, and the result was a much more powerful piece of writing.
The moral of my story is essentially that you can perhaps create less of an anticlimax by hinting at your character's transcendence to divinity, than by actually describing it. You say it's at the end of the book, so I'm guessing the plot has come to a natural conclusion by then anyway. Would it hurt to take out what you've written, or at least change the reader's perspective?

Sax

11:14 / 14.01.03

Yeah, cut from him beginning his journey into the transforming light to sitting on a cloud feeling peckish and inventing a whole new flavour of crisps.

Tamayyurt

17:54 / 14.01.03

Tez, I thought about throwing out the rest of the story and starting at the point of trancendace but it's nothing like throwing out a false start. It'll be like writing a totally different story and, although I would certainly like to tell that story, I also want to tell this one.

I sort of figured it out though. I didn't want to ruin my great vision of the future by adding petty drama or a trick ending but, the question remains: If my vision of the future is so great, why would I need to spice it up? Obviously, cause I failed totally in describing its greatness! So I shifted my focus a bit to the more gut wrenching, terrifying aspects of transcendence (Without eliminating its beauty.) and got a pretty good, rather poetic ending. We'll see how it all goes over though.

gridley

19:09 / 14.01.03

Your chacter should be talking in terms and scope that the readers will slowly understand less and less of, until eventually he's just speaking in numbers...

Unravelling

03:10 / 04.03.03

Ya big blue geek! .....
'not tachyons, surely?'...

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