Chance Can Always Make Things Worse, But Never Better

Boiled down to the finest possible description, a novel is nothing more than a series of actions characters take, which we follow. In this way, a book is really just watching cause and effect play out. However, like a set of dominoes that have been laid out in an intricate pattern, these simple physics can be breathtaking when we see the sheer scale it's operating on.

Whoa! I did not see that coming.

Some actions and reactions in books are much more complicated than dominoes, of course, and there are always going to be elements that are outside of the protagonist's knowledge or scope. For instance, Indiana Jones didn't know Elsa was a Nazi in The Last Crusade, so when she was held at gunpoint he thought she was really in danger.

That element was planned as part of the story, and it was always going to come up. However, there are some incidents in a plot that act as pure chance. In Star Wars Han and Chewie run down the wrong corridor, and find themselves in the barracks instead of locating an escape hatch. Our protagonist in Drag Me To Hell doesn't check the envelope she picked up after it got jumbled with a bunch of other junk, and thus tries to break a curse with a coin instead of with the actual item she needed. The protagonists in The Strangers just happened to be home on the night a roving gang of psychopaths were looking for a home to invade. And so on, and so forth.

Big or small, these things all happened due to random chance, and they all put the protagonists in more danger than they were already in. That's just dandy! If you try to do it the other way around, though, then you run into problems.

Good Luck, Deus Ex Machina, and Cheapening Stakes

When bad luck makes things worse for our protagonist (the car won't start, their phone rings while the killer is looking for them, etc.), that raises the stakes and increases the tension. However, if random chance can make problems go away, or it eases the protagonist's path to victory, then that becomes a serious problem.

Well we weren't going to promote you, but since Larry randomly moved to Singapore, the job's yours.

The issue you run the risk of hitting is the much-maligned Deus Ex Machina. If you're not a fan of ancient Greek theater, it was when the gods would come down from Olympus, wave their hands, and fix the situation that had developed. Translating roughly to, "Machine of the Gods," or, "The Gods in the Machine," this trope refers to any seemingly random bit of chance getting a character out of an otherwise impossible situation. As TV Tropes puts it, they fall off a cliff, and a flying robot catches them. Or they get shot, and an innocent bystander with no experience miraculously gets the bullet out and stitches them closed.

To steal a phrase from Emma Coates, "Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating." Why is that? Well, in short, it has to do with the threat we've been presented with, how truthful the stakes are, and a reasonable expectation of danger.

Think of your traditional James Bond death trap scene. The hero is strapped into a machine that's going to kill him very shortly if he doesn't do something to get out of it. And how is that scene played out, nine times out of ten? With Bond doing something to enact his escape. Maybe he manages to strain, and with a colossal effort he gets a hand free, and picks the lock just before the buzzsaw hits him. Maybe he manages to pull one of Q's gadgets out of his breast pocket with his teeth, aiming the laser and disabling the device. Maybe he just punches the shark, swims down to the grate, and escapes before the great white can eat him.

Now ask yourself how you'd feel if James was saved not by his own efforts, skills, or decisive action, but because of random happenstance. What if a cup of coffee fell on the control panel, shorting out the mechanism because a nameless tech bumped his latte? Or a squirrel bit through a cable, and tripped a breaker? Chances are you'd feel cheated. Because rather than having to do something, or overcome some obstacle, the threat was just hand-waved away by an outside force, allowing our protagonist to continue on his merry way. That can make it feel like the threat was never really valid in the first place, since our hero had to do nothing to circumvent or overcome it, which meant it may as well have never been there at all.

Make Your Characters Sweat For It

If you put obstacles in your character's way, people want to see them knock it down. So give the people what they want, and make your characters sweat to earn their goals. The struggle validates the threat, and it provides the appropriate catharsis for the audience as they watch the character's actions.

Having chance remove the obstacle, though, pretty much just creates literary blue balls; all the build-up and none of the release, if you will.

And nobody wants to pay you money for that kind of treatment.

So, because you declare your story done, go back and ask where fortune might have been a little too generous to your protagonists. Because if you take Lady Luck out of the equation, you'll likely have a much more satisfying tale to tell.

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Never Explain The Impossible (If Doing So Serves No Purpose)

How many times have you been reading a fantasy or sci-fi novel, and found your interest ebbing away as the author goes on for page after page describing the mechanism by which their magic works? You know, like when Michael Chrichton dedicated page space to explaining the particular mechanism of time travel in Timeline, not in dialogue or as part of showing off how smart a character was, but as an aside to the audience told by the narrator?

Well, if you haven't read the book, I'd hold up that decision as the exact wrong way to make the impossible aspect of a story feel real. Unfortunately, there are a lot of folks who feel that by laying out an entire schematic, and proving they've thought through exactly how everything from summoning spells to warp drives could work, that it will win them points with the audience.

The Dungeon Master has spoken.

You won't get brownie points. Because no one is here to look at the pretty scenery.

Acceptance Justifies The Impossible

First, let's talk about how the author needs to justify the impossible in their story. Whether it's aliens, ancient sorcerers, fire-breathing dragons, time travel, or anything else, there's a knee-jerk need in some authors to lecture about all the details so the audience can cram every bit of knowledge about these things into their heads. That doesn't make the impossible elements more interesting, though. If anything, treating them like the subject of an academic lecture can make them seem boring.

Because no one wants to be force fed information.

Instead, treat these impossible elements as matter-of-fact. If you state that something is real, then the audience has to accept that reality. That's the contract you've made with them. So be confident in your assertions about what elements do exist. If your protagonists sees a spell being cast, describe the ritual, and its effects. If they see a ship winking out into hyper space, or someone firing a laser rifle, don't pause the story to explain the mechanics of these occurrences. You're pile-driving your own pacing, and worse, taking something exciting and fun, and boring your readers with it.

So then the ion streams are fed into the polarizing chamber, which reverses their flow, leading to...

There is one exception to this advice; when you are using this explanation to make a point, or to show us something about a character.

As an example, take your sci-fi space marine. He's gruff, unpersonable, and extremely dangerous. He also fights in a suit of powered armor, naturally. If you have a scene where he's stripping, cleaning, and re-assembling his gear with a secondary character, it's all right to have him narrate the function of the tech he's inspecting. Not because you're trying to convince the audience that you consulted an engineer, and these combat suits are plausible. Rather, it's because you're showing us that the marine not only knows how to care for the gear, but has the technical understanding to explain it to someone else. Additionally, this scene could act as a way for the second character to get some insight below his gruff exterior. Whether it's a bonding moment with a younger character (sort of like a dad showing their kid how to do car maintenance), or finding common ground with a technician or engineer who isn't a fighter, the explanation is not the point of the scene; it's the story and character development it facilitates.

As an alternative example, take the character who has to walk us through a scenario in order to explain an important plot point. For example, a wizard is found dead inside a magic circle. The runes should have prevented any outside force from entering, so the assumption is he killed himself. However, careful examination of the circle reveals the materials it's made of wouldn't achieve that result. By dropping the little bit of knowledge that silver is meant to keep things in, not to keep them out, what was a suicide has suddenly become an imprisonment, and potentially murder. In this scenario the explanation of the intricacies of summoning and protective magics is not meant to intrigue your audience all by itself; it's meant to show that your protagonist is learned in the ways of magic, and to point out that the plot is deeper than we thought it was a moment ago.

If You Don't Need The Explanation, Don't Give It

Everything in your book is meant to serve a purpose. If you're cramming in extraneous detail that does no one any good, you're wasting both time and reader attention. So, unless it serves a greater purpose, we don't need to understand how your faster-than-light travel works, what altered physics allows the sorcerer to breathe fire, or how dragons fly. Simply tell us that these things happen, and get on with the story.

Remember, I said in Your Fantasy Novel Probably Sucks, And Professor Awesome's University Explains Why, no one falls in love with the set dressing. We're here to see the play.

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing entry. If you liked it, consider following me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter to get all my regular updates. Lastly, if you want to help me keep this blog going, consider stopping by The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a patron! As little as $1 a month goes a long way, and it gets you a free book or two as a thank you.