Today, I’ll return to a topic I visited before – my thoughts about gods and godlike creatures in fantasy stories.

I have shared my thoughts on this topic quite some time ago – back in 2019. Writing a story with godlike characters brings many challenges, most of them related to their status as something more. This is what I focused on in the linked post from 2019. One problem is striking a balance between their power and their responsibility to the world they are expected to oversee and guide.

What is their role?

One of the key questions is: what is their role in the story? Being too involved might make the “ordinary” characters irrelevant, while being too absent leads to the opposite issue. In many cases, worship is an important part of a culture, but if it’s to be a direct plot element and not just a cultural trait in a story where the god is just a myth (fictional culture could be a separate topic I won’t explore today).

Divine intervention can be a powerful story element, but to work properly means that a divine being’s power needs to be properly established. Unlimited power can lead to this fact being abused as fix-it-all while taking agency away from the mortal characters. Too limited power might raise questions as to why they were considered gods or demigods.

A pantheon of gods might be a simple way to dilute the power by being limited to a particular area, and possibly easier to work with as a writer, but it can lead to issues if their area of “expertise” isn’t clearly defined and leads to overlap issues – though these can create conflict that could be a plot element.

What sets them apart?

Such beings being at a different power level tends to be quite common. Likewise, gods and demigods being either immortal (completely or impervious to mortals’ weapons) or extremely long-lived tends to be a frequent aspect. Past that, there could be a lot of variance. Are they the same size as mortals, or not? Quite often, murals depict divine beings as larger than others, but this might not be to give a true account of their size – these murals are to depict key moments, and for someone not knowing the story, the larger characters will take more attention, so size has been an attribute of importance in art, and not always matching the god’s actual size.

What is their presence in the world?

As mentioned in the first section, a major question is whether and how a god or a demigod manifests among mortals. Are they confined to their own realm? If yes, how does that affect their power, and how does that affect the beliefs of the populace?

All these things can lead to a lot of variance. It is very likely that a benevolent steward who can appear among the people would have a loyal following, but at the same time, it could lead many to abuse this fact to ask for favors. Would a divine being choose to step away and favor minimal involvement to avoid such things? And could it lead to apathy and becoming an “absent god”? And would that, in turn, erode the faith of the populace?

What is their origin?

For “true gods”, they’re often as old as the universe in which they exist. When it comes to demigods, I think there are more ways to tackle the topic. It could be a “food pyramid” of creatures of more power, with demigods being servants or stewards of true gods (and likely their creations). Or they could be manifestations of power or energy (such as elemental creatures).

And, if there’s a source of power for a (demi)god, what would happen should that source vanish or weaken?

What is their alignment and goal?

I would say this part could sum up many aspects. I guess most people have seen some version of either a basic alignment chart (such as the one below [public domain image retrieved from Wikipedia]), a version dedicated to a specific fictional universe, or some spin-off/meme thereof.

Where a being falls on the chart can be used to give a rough idea of their level of involvement and their goals. This touches aspects such as: the willingness to interfere, how predictable any involvement would be, and more.

What this chart doesn’t show – and what might be important to the story – is how limited a divine being is in carrying out their goals. A god or demigod with very limited power or ability to affect mortals will need followers willing to carry out their will, wherever it falls.

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That’s just a few aspects of divine being in fiction. I’ve probably mentioned it before, but the more power a single character can wield, the more thought it requires to build a strong ruleset. Without that, a story can easily crack and fall apart from inconsistencies.

As always, your thoughts on the topic are welcome. Including your own experience and favorite examples.