Coincidentally...
Before I begin, I
must apologise for not being able to be here for a few days, I won’t
bore you with all the details, so let’s just say Life doesn’t
always play fair. Anyway, with that said, let’s get on with today’s
subject which came from a discussion I recently had with another
writer. It seems a reviewer had criticised her work for including a
single ‘convenient coincidence’ which, in their mind, made the
rest of the story ‘ totally unbelievable.’ Now, obviously
everyone has a right to their opinion and, if you put anything you do
into the public domain, you have to accept not everyone is going to
agree you’re a genius. But what struck me, was the idea any
coincidence within a plot could be seen as ‘convenient’, which
would mean, it’s thought by some, they just don’t happen in
reality. In my own life, there have been way too many for me to feel
this is true.
Now I do accept, in some plots, this idea of coincidence can make you shake your head in disbelief, for example, when it turns out, the mysterious boy who doesn’t talk to anyone in school, just happens to be passing by when the heroine falls off a cliff, he then sprouts wings and rescues her in the nick of time.
Or maybe, our hero’s elderly, frail mother
turns out to be a martial arts expert and flattens a whole room full
of ninja who are trying to kidnap him. I would agree these and other
similar stories do stretch the bounds of credibility to breaking
point, especially when despite this boy having attended high school
for many years, nobody has ever noticed these enormous feathery wings
before and only weeks earlier the old woman had her leg in a cast.
But for the more every day coincidence, I think there is no real
problem with including a few within a story, after all, if you didn’t
have any, nothing would ever happen!
If you take a love story, for example, the two main characters would never get together at all, if their kids didn’t attend the same school or they worked at the same place or they were trapped in the same elevator. It’s not just romance either, there are all those action/adventure stories where it turns out, the previously- believed ‘hopeless’ character, when confronted with an army of flesh-eating zombies, becomes the hero, as he is the only one who studied the killer virus for his college project so he knows how to manufacture an antidote out of three painkillers, some peanut butter and an old sock, which ultimately saves the world. As a side note, sadly, despite his heroics, the leading lady still ends up with the muscle-bound hunk who didn’t really do much more than stare moodily and repeat the phrase ‘ we need to keep moving’ as often as possible. Obviously, coincidence plays a huge part in comedy too, how many times has there been a case of identity within a plot which results in ‘hilarious consequences’? I don’t want to labour my point, but coincidences aren’t just used by the ‘lazy’ writer to explain something which they couldn’t be bothered to work on in any other way… I truly believe most authors would want to avoid any line within their work which said,
“… and so the team were saved by Snuffles the hero’s dog, who, having spent years watching his owner fly helicopters, had somehow learned the controls himself and was able to fly low over the mountains and rescue them all from certain death.”
Instead I would hope, it would be a grippingly-tense tale of the team working together to survive and the wonderful Snuffles would only perhaps feature at the very end of the story, when our hero, bloodied and bruised from his near-death experience loses his door key, and his faithful pet, who has been at home throughout the whole adventure, just happens to be able to open the door with his teeth.
As I said earlier, my own ‘real’ life has been liberally peppered with coincidences, as I am sure, yours have too, so to have them appear within a story, well that just makes the gap between the real and the imagined, slightly less wide. Personally, I believe readers love that moment, when two arguing lovers, who have sworn never to speak again, are unknowingly signed up for the same job or a poverty-struck boy happens to find $100 bill in the street. As for why? Perhaps partly because it gives us the hope, that unexpected things can happen in our own lives too, however predictable we believe them to be.
Well, coincidentally, I think that’s more than enough from me for now..so until the next time…
Take care out there
xx
