Writing How to write a god protagonist

[Zenomew]

I am struggling with the concept of a god protagonist like how do you write one without making them super op but at the same time not making them completely weak and ungodly?

Like what even makes a god a god ? Is it immortality (which by itself is a OP ability),faith (again another potential OP power) or power over a specific domain of life(like fire ,water, stories,games , blacksmiths etc)

Please help me out

 

[Fairemont]

Study Greek mythology.

Gods that are powerful but so filled with flaws it is a miracle they function at all.

 

[LuoirM]

The protagonist is literally the first thing to the story so it's confusing me why would you consider writing up a concept without a rough idea in mind first of what "God" means to you personally and to your world

Study Greek mythology.

Gods that are powerful but so filled with flaws it is a miracle they function at all.

Half of it is "Ego" and "Didn't think mere mortals would lie to 'em" kekw

 

[Fairemont]

Mortals lying to Gods is like the number one thing mortals do.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Rick Riordan did a decent job of this with his Percy Jackson novels - the characters are demigods, possibly gods one day, but just learning their powers and how their world works.
I had considered writing a story like that myself (but with an adult who discovers he's a reincarnation of Quetzalcoatl) but never got past Ch 2 and scrapped it.
Just have something blocking some of their powers, or have them be very limited - like they are supreme in one area, but weak or just "competitive" at everything else. The Celtic, Norse and Greek pantheons all have some good examples (and some of the stories I've read, if they were accurately translated, show the Chinese pantheon has a lot of metaphoric red tape limiting the powers of the gods and other beings of The Celestial Bureaucracy).
Also you can use things like shame and honor to limit them, if you want to get really complex (the classic Japanese pantheon had a lot of examples of this).
Further, the Hindu pantheon covers this quite well, with a lot of the stories being about gods as protagonists, with other gods as the bad guys (there are mortal heroes as well - often they do most of the fighting while the gods hang back and only deal with other gods or the nastiest of monsters).

 

[Zenomew]

Huh just now it hit me the story is about a normal girl becoming a goddess after a freak accident with her phone

Basically she ends up becoming a goddess of few villages which eventually grows into a kingdom

She is an Agricultural and forest based goddess the main story is how she struggles to do her duties as a god for an entire kingdom


When you have millions praying to you every day it's kind of hard to relax and not get high blood pressure (even if you are immortal it's still a bad thing)

Or dealing with erratic faith like people praying for victory in battle while she has to awkwardly explain to the general that war is not her department but she can provide them food supply though

People somehow creating a nudist cult to be one with her(as the goddess of nature) much to her embarrassment

Over analysing every word she says etc

 

[Madmcgee]

Huh just now it hit me the story is about a normal girl becoming a goddess after a freak accident with her phone

Basically she ends up becoming a goddess of few villages which eventually grows into a kingdom

She is an Agricultural and forest based goddess the main story is how she struggles to do her duties as a god for an entire kingdom


When you have millions praying to you every day it's kind of hard to relax and not get high blood pressure (even if you are immortal it's still a bad thing)

Or dealing with erratic faith like people praying for victory in battle while she has to awkwardly explain to the general that war is not her department but she can provide them food supply though

People somehow creating a nudist cult to be one with her(as the goddess of nature) much to her embarrassment

Over analysing every word she says etc

You don't need a god to be ALL powerful.
They can have rules, restrictions, senior gods, personality traits that cause them to be dangerous not only to themselves, but their followers.

I like reading stories with gods that are, in a sense, a mortal but powerful. Flawed, maybe even tragic.

Honestly, so long as they are not omnipotent, you can make sure there's tons of conflict.