coincidences in story pinterest
Coincidences may be charming enough in real life, but in fiction, they’re a fast track to wrecking your readers’ suspension of disbelief. A clever rule of thumb is that it’s all right to use a coincidence to get your characters into trouble, but never to get them out.
This not only rules out deus ex machina in your endings, it also eliminates convenient appearances of characters—allies or antagonists—unforeshadowed secrets suddenly popping out at the right moment, and even just suspiciously handy knowledge and skills on the protagonist’s part.
Now, it’s almost impossible to write a book without a few coincidences sneaking in. If you start out writing your story with a few key scenes in mind, you’re not likely to discover how those scenes link until you actually start writing them. And once you do start writing, you may discover that getting your characters from Scene A to Scene B in a logical, non-coincidental way is a whole lot tougher than it may seem.
So how to avoid coincidences?
3 Steps to Avoiding Story Coincidences
1. Simply Be Aware
As soon as you recognize something happening in your story is a coincidence, that’s a signal to step back and rethink your approach.
2. Don’t Take the Easy Way Out
Authors like coincidences because they’re easy. But in avoiding them, we not only strengthen our stories, we also have the opportunity to discover revolutionary new plot developments we may never have considered otherwise.
3. Foreshadow
And, finally, your secret weapon against coincidences is applying a little forethought and foreshadowing. Whatever is happening in your story won’t be a coincidence if you’ve already hinted to readers that it’s going to happen. So if you know certain characters are will show up to help your protagonist later on, introduce them earlier. Or if your characters require a special set of skills to conquer the climax, show them learning those skills. Just like that, your coincidence becomes a catalyst!
Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! How do you deal with story coincidences? Tell me in the comments!
