Writing the Immortal Character Without Boredom
(Or: How to Make Your Ageless Bastard Bleed, Lust, and Wreck the World—Not Just Mope Around Like an Emo Vampire on Quaaludes)
You want to write an immortal. Not just any immortal, but one who matters—a character with centuries behind their eyes, bones brittle with memory, and a soul that’s burned through every decade’s worth of hope and rot. The temptation is to write them as old, wise, and, let’s be honest, about as fun as moldy bread. You don’t want that. I sure as hell don’t. Here’s how to make immortality the curse, the gift, the weapon it really is, and not just a narrative snooze button.
1. Why Most Immortals Are Boring As Hell
Let’s torch the clichés:
Eternal wisdom: Yawn. Wisdom without scars is just pretentious monologuing.
Detached observer: Sure, they’re seen it all—but have they felt it lately?
Tragic loner: Boo-hoo. You want a statue or a goddamn character?
Never takes risks: Why would they? Can’t die, can’t lose, can’t care. Sucks to read, sucks to write.
Here’s the truth: immortality isn’t the absence of death. It’s the constant presence of loss. Everyone you love? Dead. Every place you called home? Gone. Every moral you swore by? Outdated, shattered, or a punchline now.
If you’re not making your immortal ache—if you’re not making them claw at the walls for a reason to go on—they’re not alive. They’re wallpaper.
2. Step-By-Step: Breathing Life (and Death) Into the Undying
A. Make Every Century Count (and Hurt)
Personal history isn’t just background—it’s battle scars.
Lost loves, enemies, betrayals, revolutions survived, old gods outgrown.
They flinch at fireworks because they remember real cannons.
They have favorite fashions, foods, even words that are extinct.
B. Don’t Let Them Be “Above” Humanity
Give them vices—addictions, obsessions, pet peeves that change with each era.
They fall in love, get obsessed, rage, relapse, lose control.
Make them chase something: a new thrill, a memory, an impossible forgiveness.
C. Let Immortality Warp Their Morality
Rules change. Your immortal’s lines in the sand are drawn, erased, and redrawn.
Maybe they don’t value life—maybe they treasure it more than mortals ever could.
They’ve done unforgivable things. Maybe they’re still paying.
D. Give Them “Old Wounds” That Never Heal
PTSD from a century-old massacre.
Superstitions from extinct religions.
Outdated habits: bowing instead of shaking hands, collecting coins that haven’t existed in 200 years.
E. Make Them Desperate for Connection (or Terrified of It)
Do they keep falling in love with mortals, knowing it’ll end?
Do they avoid closeness at all costs? Does it slip through their fingers anyway?
Personal confession:
The most immortal thing about an immortal is not that they can’t die—it’s that they keep living, despite everything they’ve lost.
3. Ingredient Hacks: Tricks for Keeping Immortality Alive on the Page
Weird hobbies: They pick up skills every era. Maybe they’re a violinist, a forger, a hacker, a gardener—sometimes all at once.
Memory quirks: They remember old phone numbers but forget birthdays. They confuse centuries, faces, even languages.
Relic hoarders: Their home is packed with antiques, junk, holy relics, love letters, bones, and broken promises.
4. Survival Strategies: Don’t Let Them Off Easy
Make them risk—immortality makes risk-taking both harder and worse. When they lose, they lose for a long, long time.
Let them screw up. Living forever doesn’t mean being perfect, it means stacking up more failures than anyone else on earth.
Have them meet someone older, or more dangerous, to remind them they’re not gods—just survivors.
5. Confessions From the Trenches
My first immortal character was a total drag. He’d “seen it all,” and let everyone know it. Readers yawned.
The best one? She was a mess—fell in love with the wrong people, hoarded trinkets, ate candy she hated just because it reminded her of a lost lover, and started wars out of boredom.
She wasn’t above pain. She was pain, wrapped in sarcasm and sex and terrible decisions.
6. The Final Dare: Make Them Ache, Burn, and Want
Don’t just give your immortal a tragic backstory and call it a day. Make them fight for every connection, every new obsession, every reason to get out of bed. Make their memory a curse and a gift. Let them be haunted, lustful, furious, and wrong. Let them want.
Because immortality isn’t just living forever—
it’s surviving yourself,
again and again,
and finding a reason to care,
no matter how many centuries it takes.