I've written a fictional story and the way my characters are coming together and forming a bond seems way too coincidental to me.
A lady lives on the first floor while her tenant, a guy, lives on the ground floor. A girl is supposed to meet that lady but, on the day of their meeting, the lady has to attend to urgent work so she leaves, without informing the girl. When the girl, who is on her way to that lady's home, calls her, she is then informed of the situation. For all the right reasons the girl has to meet her that very day and she decides that she'll wait for her outside her house. The lady then suggests that the girl can wait at her tenant's place, who is very kind. The girl is about to reach that place when she sees children playing in the house adjacent to the one she's supposed to enter. For all the right reasons, she joins the children just to know that one of them suddenly wants to go home, for he is sick. Turns out that the sick kid is the lady's child. The kid wants to go back to his house, to the tenant, as he was in-charge of the kid for the day. For all the right reasons, she is the one to take him to that guy. While waiting for the lady to come she takes care of the kid in a way that makes the guy fall for her.
Everything that has happened is kind of a coincidence but it is the turning point for all the characters to come together. The girl getting in the lady's good books and being friends with that kid. The guy seeing her take care of the kid.
I can't get past the coincidental urgency of the lady and the kid falling sick just in time to let the girl take him to his home.
Will the reader be able to digest such a big moment as a coincidence?
This is the only coincidental situation I have created in the story. No other coincidences.
Have I made a mistake in creating the situation?
Answer
There's a rule... I can't recall the name, but it's a fairly common rule.
Essentially, the more accidental your reveal is, the more build-up you need not to make it a cheap deus ex machina.
To give an example, Tom Clancy's "Sum of all fears". A nuclear submarine crashes into a huge tree trunk in the middle of the ocean, suffering major damage right when a nuclear crisis is approaching its peak, and the accident serves as a major turning point. How the heck does a nuclear submarine crash into a big tree trunk in the middle of the ocean?
Well, first we start a thousand years ago as the tree seed started to grow... then, throughout several chapters we encounter lumberjacks, transport crew, the whole endeavor of bringing the enormous tree to Japan where it's to be used for a temple. We are presented with a slice of life of a less-than-competent sailor failing to attach it, then the ship in the storm, and the tree breaking free.
Another plotline through many chapters tells of the tribulations of the submarine crew, a competent captain displaced by ambitious, self-important moron through some back-scene games, and said moron making stupid errors and being a pushover, demoralizing the crew.
After so many chapters, when a stupid maneuver ordered by the captain crashes the submarine into the trunk, it comes as a perfectly acceptable incident, with all its elements explained. If anything, the consequences of the lengthy build-up seem rushed, the incident not playing a major role in the whole plot - but the long set-up made it completely acceptable!
Same here. Give a thread of build-up of the emergency situation which will demand the lady's attention, some politics and incompetence that lead up to her needing to be there and then. Give the kids a thread that builds up to the food poisoning, say, the kids challenging each other to eat some worms or something else they really shouldn't.
With proper build-up, any coincidences, even not very plausible, will be completely OK. Without that - the writing becomes cheap, a soap opera with little depth and deus ex machina contrivances.
No comments:
Post a Comment