Forum: Author Hangout

If the villain is determined to kill the hero, unless they are scheduled to return in later episodes then a fight to the death is the only logical conclusion.
Where financial supremacy is the objective - even when violence and murder are used by the villains - I recall several stories where removing patent fees or open publication was a satisfactory literary ending to the threat.
With non-fatal intent, the hostile villain is a frequent character in cheating wife stories, and in those they frequently retreat from the scene with their tail between their legs, but still alive.

If the response doesn't counter the threat, then the threat remains and the hero may come over as a bit of a wimp, but fatal results would probably be less popular in cheating stories, so it will depend on the genre and the way the main characters are portrayed. Personal struggles may tend to be less popular because it is harder to identify with them.

I have a few thoughts.

1. Why do you want to draw a line at all?

This comes down to why you write. For me, I have a few stories in my head that want to be written. If I could complete a story that is popular enough to sell, great but it's not why I write and it won't drive what I write.

On the other hand, if your motivator is $$$ then you have to draw the line and put your effort into what will sell, but you have lots of competition.

2. One of my in-progress stories, has a main character who is not a hero, an anti-hero or a villain. I conceptualize him as an anti-villain.

He has a strong moral code but it differs strongly from society at large in many important aspects. The primary conflict is not against a hero, but a true villain.

The MC has a male dominant world view a a secondary mind control power.

The villain is a female mastermind bent on world conquest and the creation of a female dominant society of her own design.

At first she is only aware of the mind control after he stumbles into and takes out one of her operatives, seeing him as a fly to be swatted. In time she learns the true nature of his power and sees him as an existential threat to her goals.

At that point she faces the crisis of leading a secret society directed at world conquest, not by military force, but by infiltration and subversion while trying to eliminate one man powerful enough to be almost unbeatable.

3 From a reader perspective I am a fan of Sherlock Holmes style mysteries, where the conflict is not a physical conflict of life or death, but a conflict of intellects, a conflict of deceiver vs diviner.

As an author or a reader, I don't see a problem with alternate forms of conflict if they are well presented and interesting.

I have another story I have started but not posted. This one I don't intend to post until at least the initial book of the saga length story is complete.

The initial MC is a young male with a very strongly male dominant world view who obtains god like power at the beginning of the story. There will be some traditional conflict in the story, but beyond the first book, the primary conflict is the world view of the initial MC vs the initial world view of society and how society and governments are forced to adapt to him.

The primary limit on the MC's power is range and area of effect. In a small space close to his center he is nearly omnipotent. However. How much he can change things falls off drastically with distance/ volume(space and time), like gravity.

One aspect of his power is passive, his mere existence will constantly push the world around him to be closer to what he thinks it should be.

He is effectively immortal, like Obi-Wan Kenobi, even if someone could find a way to destroy his physical human body, that would only make him stronger.

The world view vs world view conflict is expressed in another aspect of his power. Having followers, having other people adopt his world view/ethos increases his range. Both his passive and his conscious uses of his power can push harder on a larger chunk of the world.

Ultimately the only way to "defeat" him will be to campaign for an opposing world view to keep his number of followers confined. I haven't yet decided if the preexisting world leaders will figure this out before it's too late.

I haven't yet figured out if I can make this work as well on paper as it works in my head.

Not an author, but I read a lot of stories. The ones I like have a wide variety of conflicts and they take time, and a lot of pages to resolve. Stories where the difficult issues are resolved immediately and impossible problems before the next chapter don't hold my interest. The problem with superman as a hero is that stories require a succession of super-villains to provide interesting conflicts. I read and abandoned part-way though a time travel western where the hero was incredibly better at fast draw than all the opponents he met in gun-fights. After the third or tenth or hundredth conflict is resolved without the hero raising a sweat (he had climate controlled armor under his clothing) I got bored and left. To some extent the same problem occurs when the hero is a football or other sports hero and he and his team win every game. Or the hero meets and makes a conquest of every girl he sees.

I am not saying I want heroes to lose to make a story interesting, but if there is no chance he won't win, what do you offer the reader to continue the story?