Is it bad storytelling to have things happen by complete chance?

Life is full of chance occurrences. In many ways, though, our appetite for story is based on our appetite for a more logical, predictable world than we actually live in. We want stories to have the logic that the real world does not.

But chance can be made logical simply by foreshadowing. If a picnic is going to be ruined by rain at a critical moment, the reader does not feel cheated by this chance occurrence if earlier a character observed clouds on the horizon or heard a weather forecast predicting a chance of rain. A gun that jams at the critical juncture does not make the reader feel cheated if previously characters have discussed how this gun jams sometimes or a character is scolded for not cleaning their gun properly.

I once saw Bernard Cornwell speaking at the Historical Novel Society Conference and he talked about going back and putting doors in wall. If we was going to have Sharpe run down an alley and escape the French through the back door of a tavern, he had to go back and have him walk through that door a few chapter's earlier. Without the foreshadowing, it is dumb luck. With the foreshadowing, it is part of the world and therefore legitimate when it comes in handy for escape.

It is obviously possible to take this too far, or to use it too often. And it is obviously unsatisfactory if luck, no matter how foreshadowed, gets the protagonist out of having to face their moment of moral crisis. They have to face it, for that it the heart of the story arc.

But on the other hand, in order to force the protagonist towards that moment, it is often necessary to herd them into a box canyon through a series of accidents, because in real life they would naturally find ways to avoid the climactic moment. Chance, then, is how you bring your protagonist, kicking and screaming, to their moment of truth. And as long as the chance (good or bad) that brings them there is appropriately foreshadowed, the reader will not feel you have cheated.

posted almost 8 years ago

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Mark Baker‭

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At extremes: yes, relying on "chance" as a plot device can be very unsatisfying.

The reader knows that "chance" isn't really a matter of luck; instead, it's the author manipulating events.

The reader also knows they need to suspend disbelief -- so some level of luck and happenstance and implausibility is to be expected. But too much of it, or having chance play too central a role, and the story can feel arbitrary, forced, and unsatisfying.

Chance as premise is fine; chance as plot development is trickier.

Generally speaking, chance as part of the story premise is not a major issue. A chance occurrence as an inciting event is fine -- a lot of stories get their start when chance events shake up "what was supposed to happen."

Consider, for example, A Wizard Of Oz. Dorothy and her house just happen to be swept up in a hurricane and dropped on the Wicked Witch of the East. That's the event that gets the whole story going. But imagine what a dull story it would be if she got all the way up to the Wicked Witch of the West, and right when she got there, a hurricane just happened to drop a house on that witch as well.

It's precisely the same coincidence. Same event. Same level of plausibility. But as a premise, it works just fine; while as a development mid-story, it just stops the story's momentum and feels arbitrary.

When something looks implausible, but is justified, acknowledge its implausibility.

Sometimes you have some information management to do -- something seems like an unlikely coincidence, but actually it's got a perfectly reasonable justification. The problem is, from the POV of the character the coincidence is happening to, they don't know that there's a good reason. That makes it hard to win reader trust -- even if it's just "Trust me, there's a good explanation for this, which you'll discover later on."

One thing that can help is to acknowledge the implausibility as a conundrum to be solved. Sometimes it's important to signal to the reader "Yes, this is weird, it is implausible. Don't worry; it'll make sense later. I'm not just careless or messing with you."

Turn the implausibility (which the reader might be annoyed at) into a mystery (which the reader is looking forward to seeing solved), and you'll have an easier time with this category of "coincidences."

Chance is better for complications than it is for solutions.

In general, it's easier to accept coincidences that make things harder and more complicated, than coincidences that make things easier and more straightforward.

Maybe it's because we feel the author is making life easy on themselves, sparing themselves from tighter plotting. Maybe it's because we believe in Murphy's Law, whereas miraculous boons and solutions rarely fall into our laps. But it's a helpful tool. It might technically be a coincidence, but if you can make it feel like a moment of "I KNEW something was going to go wrong," or "Uh oh, that's going to MESS THINGS UP," you can often ride that feeling of "narrative correctness" and the implausibility will be excused.

The flip side of this is, avoid letting solutions occur by happenstance. The dramatic arc before a solution is one of tension -- "how are they going to get off this; how are they gonna pull this one off?" Coincidence is an extremely unsatisfying resolution to that tension; avoid it.

Chance can be made less implausible by groundwork and foreshadowing.

While the "easy" answer to a criticism of implausible coincidence is "Don't do it," very often this is solvable. If you can shore up your coincidence and make it feel less coincidental, more a natural consequence of preceding events, the problem often goes away.

You do groundwork by setting things in motion before the coincidence happens. You set down a trail of dominoes leading to your coincidence, and knock the first one over early in the story; now it's part of the premise and the coincidence feels minor and unremarkable. But then you have another consequence follow, and another -- these feel perfectly plausible, not coincidental at all -- until finally you arrive at the coincidence you really wanted, and it flows flawlessly from what you've already set up.

Foreshadowing is very similar, but it's more in hints and narrative conventions than in concrete facts. Start making the reader suspect that something is going to be complicated, or that a miraculous solution is close at hand, if only they knew what it is. Hint that someone may do something rash, or have unexpected resources, or be doomed to a tragic death. Whatever it is that you foreshadow, it makes the coincidence feel like something that was a long time coming.

Hope this helps. All the best!

posted almost 8 years ago

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Standback‭

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There's nothing inherently wrong with chance occurrences, in my opinion. Coincidences happen frequently in real life, after all.

Regardless, what happens by chance shouldn't necessarily be dictated by chance. I believe it's the individual writer's obligation to decide how to deal with this. Some important plot elements, for example, might follow from a chain of logical consequences. This won't be some dictated by chance, but guided by a series of deductions based on prior events. As one commenter said, there should be a degree of subtlety here. But, some events might naturally be attributed to chance. Somebody might be "the chosen one" simply because this person was in the right place at the right time. There might be a reason for this - you might decide that there's no special reason for the protagonist to fulfill the obligation set forth upon him other than his presence in a specific location.

If you think about plot events in this way, I believe you'll find a balance between coincidence and consequence. If you find too many things occurring by chance, it might be time to think about your story progression and analyze the story's chain of events.

posted almost 8 years ago

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Tim Haight‭

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I agree with @S.Mitchell about chance being a major part of authorship in writing. It's good things can happen by chance. If it didn't happen at all, then what kind of writing would that be?

To make it more believable, you need to cleverly introduce the plot point. You state the "Chart of Sinners" is found in the middle of the road. Sure, this could happen ... but what are the chances this chart would remain in the middle of the road for any length of time without someone else noticing it? Or maybe being in the middle of the road it would get trampled and destroyed before it is noticed by the two assassins. If you plan your "chance" things better, it doesn't look as though it was done by chance, but more by design.

When you introduce the plot point, do it by subtlety. If you are subtle in how you introduce it, the reader may understand it will be important later on in the writing, but you won't be giving anything away. Then when you get to the point where the point is made, the reader has the "ah-ha" moment where they realize it, which makes the story that much richer and draws them in further. There is a fine line, however, between making it too subtle and stuffing it down the reader's throat. If you make it too subtle, the reader won't pick up on it, so the chance for the "ah-ha" moment is lost.

The major point here is if you plan the "chance happening" it won't bother the reader so much when they are reading it. You can get away with it far more readily and the reader will enjoy it all the more.

posted almost 8 years ago

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Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2‭

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Most of the time, it's important that the outcome — good or bad — follow from the main character's actions. If the outcome is determined by chance or randomness or coincidence, it's less likely to feel satisfying.

On the other hand, a certain amount of coincidence is fine if it complicates the main character's problems. But even there, an abundance of chance can make the story feel arbitrary. (Sometimes you can make arbitrariness work, if the character's response to the arbitrariness illustrates something coherent about the character.)

My general rule of thumb: Coincidence can make things worse for the main character, but never better.

posted almost 8 years ago

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Dale Hartley Emery‭

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Complete chance? Yes. That's a form of deus ex machina, where something outside the hero/ine's actions swoops in at the end to save the day. If something arbitrary outside the plot advances it without the hero's actions, that's poor storytelling.

So how do you fix that? You already did:

Well actually with that one the reasons the Chart of Sinners is there is actually very extensive. It's got a reason for how it's just lying on the pavement (not a stupid backstory, it's a disaster that actually happens within the book)

Then make sure that the reader learns those reasons. My instinct would be to say "do it by the midpoint of the book," unless there's a plot-related reason why you need to wait until near the end to reveal it.

For "just happens to encounter Old Wise Dude," and similar Oh Gosh Coincidences, do the same thing: create a reason or backstory. The Old Wise Dude was told a prophecy in his youth that he needed to be in that spot on that day. The MacGuffin is sent to the hero by someone whom the hero doesn't encounter until the one-third point. The heroine's parents have been in touch with the headmistress of the mage school since she was born, and the headmistress has just been waiting for her Nth birthday to send an acceptance letter. And so on.

Outside forces can act to present the hero with the opportunity to kick off the plot, and make it look like chance, but the reader has to learn later that it was in fact engineered.

posted almost 8 years ago

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Lauren Ipsum‭

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