posted
You bump into an old college roommate at Wal-Mart, one you haven't seen in a while and thought lived in Detroit. Turned out they were visiting family nearby and happened to run to the store. This is a coincidence. They happen. In real life, they do happen from time to time.
In stories, on the other hand, I abhore coincidence. For example: terrorists are driving a truck with a nuclear bomb to a prearranged location for deilvery when all of a sudden they get a flat tire. Instead of thinking, "What a coincidence!" I think "Give me a break!"
Even though coincidence happens in real life, in our stories we must make the events meaningful, particularly the significant events. This goes to the heart of how we create tension and drama in our stories.
posted
Sorry Christine, but I don't understand what you're asking here. I agree with what you've written 100%, but I'm not sure of what you want responses on. Maybe that we as writers should include coincinences in unique ways? And if so, how is it done?
Sounds like an interesting topic, I'm just not sure how to reply.
posted
Not all my posts are questions. Sometimes I just feel like spouting out something I think is true, usually because I just saw an example of someone doing something really bad. You don't have to respond at all. Responses to these types of posts usually come in the form of 1.) disagreement or 2.) agreement with ideas on how to expand the theme, possibly with examples.
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posted
The trouble when you're reading fiction is that you never forget, in a little corner of your head, that you're reading something someone made up. This means that it's not real life, and if an incredible coincidence arises, you will not think, "How amazing", but "how lazy the author was".
And I'm not sure about coincidences to kickstart a story. I've read a novel which was based on the fact that the two protags met coincidentally in a supermarket or something like that. I think they're all right to use at the very beginning, because you deal with the consequences of that, but that to solve any of the problems you might be having by a coincidence is close to cheating.
posted
In my opinion, and trust me, this is strictly my opinion, coincidence and Divine intervention are two horses of totally different colors. Both horses, just different hues.
Coincidence is me and someone else reaching for the same salt shaker at the same time. Divine intervention is me and someone, whom, I haven't seen in 20 years and have suddenly been thinking about reaching for the same saltshaker.
Coincidence and/orDivine intervention falls into the chaos theory. One little thing that happens to you or someone else can in turn affect the entire world, like the example you gave, the terrorist that gets a flat tire.
I recently read a reflection concerning the stories of those that survived the events of 9/11. Basically, they missed planes and were late getting to work. One person wore a new pair of shoes that was rubbing their heel in the wrong way and causing a raw spot, so they stopped at a drug store to buy a bandaid. Another person stopped to answer an annoying telephone call before walking out of the house. One person survived because it was their turn to stop and buy donuts and the counter person was aggravatingly slow. One person missed their plane because their child was particulary trying that morning in regards to getting dressed. Another person missed work at the WTC because they were involved in an auto accident. Coincidence or Divine intervention?
Stories such as these fascinate me. I have been on the receiving end of Divine intervention several times, that I can readily recall, one, in particular, that, not only, could have cost me my job but would and could have meant prison time, if not for the intervention.
For those here who believe in God, we know that God interacts with us daily, these are the coincidences and by acknowledging the larger Divine intervention, I accept and recognize the smaller coincidences that now occur.
posted
Girl grows up in NE(Nebraska). Family has lived there since WWII. In 1991, when Girl is 20, she travels to PA for a Ren Faire.
Boy Grows up in PA, Family has lived there for 9 generations or so. In 1991, when he is 21 he meets Girl at a local Ren Faire.
They fall in love, both move to NE and eventually start talking marriage. While Discussing names, they discover that their grandfathers both have the same first two names? Girls Grandfather is Leroy Bertram and Boys is Bertram Leroy.
Cooincidence? - No.
After a brief discussion they discover that Girls Grandfather was named after Boys Grandfather. (the girls family had kids at young ages, boys a little older so her family had an extra generation in 40 years.) After a moment of panic and thinking they might be cousins, they discover that Boys grandfather and Girls Great Grandfather were best friends who did everything together. After the war, the families lost contact.
And somehow 2 and 3 generations later, their familys were merged.
Cooincidence? - That's a really tough one to call cooincidence. But this, too, is a true story - mine.
[This message has been edited by pantros (edited January 17, 2006).]
posted
I suppose the reason it's not used so much in writing is it smacks of deus ex machina (which is discussed at length in another topic).
That said, if coincidence is handled well, and the author understands the price to pay, then go for it.
If you think about it, real-life coincidences have a better probability of happening than the events in most stories. In "real" terms, Luke Skywalker would be stuck harvesting moisture from vaporators on Tatooine forever. But a space battle just happens to take place over his home planet, and the Lars farm just happens to be the next stop on the Jawas' route, and Owen just happens to need some droids, and one of the ones he picks just happens to blow a gasket, and Luke just happens to trigger the hologram of Leia, and some Sandpeople just happen to be around when Luke finds Artoo, and Ben Kenobi just happens to be going for a stroll after they knock Luke upside the head, and Ben just happens to be the guy Artoo is loooking for and all this is going on when the Stormtroopers just happen to drop in on Owen and Beru for tea.
That's what, nine coincidences in the first twenty minutes or so? But it works marvellously due to the genre Lucas used to tell the story.
posted
If coincidences are incorporated into the story on a regular basis, it would not bother me. Also, getting a flat tire could be due to a character trait like improper maintenance of the vehicle.
Explanatory style is a major component of the narrative "personality" (whatever the actual POV used) and contributes to whether the book has an optimistic feel or a pessimistic feel. If we are in a universe where things happen for no reason and you can't really do anything about them, it will have pessimistic tone.
I guess that is something I have struggled with in trying to write an optimistic character's POV. He comes off seeming callous or a parody.
quote: In "real" terms, Luke Skywalker would be stuck harvesting moisture from vaporators on Tatooine forever. But a space battle just happens to take place over his home planet, and the Lars farm just happens to be the next stop on the Jawas' route, and Owen just happens to need some droids, and one of the ones he picks just happens to blow a gasket, and Luke just happens to trigger the hologram of Leia, and some Sandpeople just happen to be around when Luke finds Artoo, and Ben Kenobi just happens to be going for a stroll after they knock Luke upside the head, and Ben just happens to be the guy Artoo is loooking for and all this is going on when the Stormtroopers just happen to drop in on Owen and Beru for tea.
That's what, nine coincidences in the first twenty minutes or so? But it works marvellously due to the genre Lucas used to tell the story.
First of all, it was no coincidence that a space battle took place near Tatooine. Princess Leigha was there looking for Obiwan, who was there because Luke was there. None of this was coincidence. Second, the droids, too, were headed for Obiwan, which was why they ended up so near Owen's farm and why that was where they were sold. The droid that broke did not break by coincidence. R2D2 did that on purpose.
<Takes deep breath>
R2D2 is a sentient droid. You think it's coincidence that he let Luke see part of that message? Then you weren't paying attention. As for Obiwan being nearby when the sand people attacked, I suspect that he kept a pretty close watch over Luke and he did, after all, possess the force which may have *told* him that Luke was in trouble. And of course Ben is the person Luke was looking for because...well see everything I wrote above.
There was no coincidence in the setup for Star Wars.
posted
If the coincidence is the premise, or can be, I find no problem. One criticism of War of the Worlds (recent movie, not the book, although the book's the same) is that it's a wild coincidence that Cruse's character would survive while people all around were dying. I don't get this. If he'd been one who died before the end, his story wouldn't have been satisfying. It makes more sense to tell the story of a character that survives. If any survives, the probability that there is a survivor is of course 100%.
If the coincidence is from a large set of coincidences, no problem. For example, suppose we're playing poker. How improbable it is, that I got exactly the hand that I did! But it's the nature of the game: every poker hand is wildly improbable, but if you're in the game, the probability that you'll get one of them is 100%!
I wouldn't mind a coincidence like Christine's running into some she knew from far away. Unless this someone had the secret password to the treasure box she'd just found and had no way to open.
I think the important thing about coincidence is that, like all plot devices, it must have something to do with the progression and flow of the story or it becomes contrived by default. Also, a coincidence can't be used for one single purpose. It is the author's responsibility to imply that very quickly right after, or during, when the coincidence occurs, or they risk losing the reader.
I think coincidence can work in a story, but it can't be simply a random occurance. For example, what about a character bumping into someone they know but haveen't seen in awhile. The character thinks, 'what a coincidence', but the following conversation makes the character suspicious for some reason. The character starts wondering about the "accidental" meeting, leading them along other paths and thoughts deeper into the plot of the story, only to find a connection for the coincidental meeting later, or even during the conversation. I think this is used quite often im mysteries, for example.
Or how about a story completely about a series of unbelievable coincidences, so that in the end, they aren't coincidences at all, but some conspiracy or hidden agenda?
In either example, the unbelievability of the coincidences can work in my opinion.
I think the reason that a coincidence works at the beginning of a story, is because it's used to introduce the characters--gives them a reason for being in the story, and thus, it is a part of the plot and plot progression.
posted
Christine -- I think you made the wrong distinction. It's not coincidence that the tire blows out. It's cheap complication. Coincidence in fiction works fine because it happens in life. But how many times have you been in a hurry to get somewhere and have your tire blow out? For that matter, how many times have you had your tire blown out at all? I've had it happen once, and the tire was bad and wasn't the right size anyway.
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posted
Coincidences (whatever you wish to call them) happen all the time; an event that has only a 1 in a million probability of occurring to someone during any given day should happen thousands of times each day -- because there are billions of people on earth. When we lose our suspension of disbelief is when that probability becomes specified. It's no big deal if we run into someone in the store that we haven't seen in many years; the odds that some old friend and we would be in that particular store at the same time are pretty bad -- but given how many times each of us goes to the store in our lifetime, is it any surprise that we might run into old acquiantances there from time to time? The problem is when we make it any particular old acquaintance (say, the one that holds the key piece of information to solving whatever problem our life revolves around right then). Then the odds become insurmountable. If this is to happen without losing the audience's attention, the author must demonstrate that some intelligence is behind the event (be it divine providence, a deep nefarious scheme by the antagonist, some help provided by an ally, etc.) We know this intuitively to a degree; this is why we roll our eyes at the use of coincidences as a deux ex machina in the solution of a story. But it can also be demonstrated mathematically. For those with an interest in this, William Dembski has a superb book titled The Design Inference. He tries to isolate the point at which something ceases to be a statistical improbability and becomes a statistical impossibility.
Ultimately, true coincidence has very little place in fiction because of this; we try to write out of the story anything that doesn't advance the story. Yet our audience knows that any coincidence that would actually advance the story is so improbable as to be basically impossible. So (with the possible exception of coinicidence initiated stories), I think we're generally better off leaving out coincidences that are at all related to the main plot. Naturally, if there is a system of causation in effect, the event isn't a coincidence, and thus this discussion doesn't apply.
Wow, I don't know if this post made any sense to anyone; it barely makes sense to me.
posted
Love Stories can use cooincidence and maintain their entertainment value.
Action/Hero stories cannot because everything has to be becuase the character made heroic choices.
Horror stories can include cooincidence, but not to benefit the heroes.
Cooincidence has its place in fiction, just not as a way to move the story forward, except in love stories. This is because in love stories we like to have the romantic ideal of destiny.
And for a good example of that ideal, read my first post on this thread.
[This message has been edited by pantros (edited January 17, 2006).]
posted
Building on what wbriggs said (although I'm not sure if what I'm about to say is an example of using a coincidence) most of the time you introduce multiple POV characters in a novel that don't know each other they eventually end up meeting each other through coincicence. In fact, in my WIP I start of with 3 seperate storylines that all merge in the first third or forth of the novel or so.
Now the way in which these seperate characters meet is pure coincidence, but whenever this happens in books I read I don't get annoyed by it because, well, if these characters weren't all going to end up being essential to the story, the author wouldn't be showing them to you would he/she? In fact, merely the act of showing all these characters makes most readers expect them to meet at some point, to the point where I personally would get frustrated with whatever book I'm reading if they DON'T come together, coincidence or not.
Maybe this isn't coincidence, but something else entirely, but just like the Star Wars example, once you know the full story a good deal of "convenient coincidences," the ones that are done well anyway, don't come off as a lazy writer, but just another part of the story that works.
(Incedentally, I do think the fact that the Lars needed to buy some droids was a coincidence, but the only one I see at the beginning of Star Wars, for all those points previously mentioned.)
posted
Thinking more about it, Mark Twain's Second Rule of Writing states, "The parts of a story shall be necessary parts of the story and shall help develop it."
The problem with coincidence, at least as I understand it when it's bad in fiction, is that it's not develop properly. This is my big beef with the movie RETURN OF THE KING when the eagles appear. I know Tolkien, and in Tolkien it makes sense. But not in the movie. All of a sudden they are there. It's never developed.
So long as coincidence is developed and is reasonable it can work in the first half of a story. When the story opens and as it develops. (Lars needing to buy two new droids.) But once the story reaches its midpoint and begins to hone in on the conclusion, coincidence is irritating. A sign that the author doesn't konw what the hell he or she is doing.
noun 1 : the act or condition of coinciding : CORRESPONDENCE 2 : the occurrence of events that happen at the same time by accident but seem to have some connection; also : any of these occurrences
I post this definition because many of the posts seem to be straying from the meaning of coincidence, confusing it with a very similiar but distinct concept: luck or chance.
It is not a coincidence when several characters who did not know each other appear together in the same book and eventually meet. People meet all the time and it is no coincidence. Going by definition 2: If you begin in multiple POV's with characters who did not know each other and they meet through random chance, this is not coincidence because the only connection they have, other than their meeting, is that they are all in the same story. It was a given that they would eventually have something to do with one another and thereby contribute to the unwravelling story.
It is not a coincidence when the main character of a story, especially in first person point of view, does not die in some horrible battle in which 99% of the soldiers died. If he haad died, we would not need to write about him.
A poker game is full of chance and luck, but no coincidence. You get in the game to tempt fate. Everything that happens thereafter is in fate's domain.
That said, I've seen some good points here.
Humor: I thought of humor when I wrote the initial post but was just as happy to have someone else bring it up. Coincidence can be used to great effect in comedy in the capable hands of the right author. But, as wazs said, the coincidence can not be used to help the protagoinst, only to make things funny or perhaps more complicated.
I've seen coincidence work in romance as well, now that I think of it, though in that case "serendipity" may be a better word to describe the circumstance. The readers of romance see the coincidental reunion of two long lost lovers as fate and as incredibly romantic, rather than a cheat.
Minister: Your post made sense to me and I think it did an excellent job of explaining the problem with coincidence.
And now, to try to wrap things up:
It isn't a coincidence that your hero is in your story, no matter how he enters it. If he wasn't interesting, you wouldn't have written about him. It is a coincidence when, at the climax of the story, he ducks at the exact moment a sharp shooter had his sites trained on him and pulled the trigger. The two events have coincided in a way that eliminates drama because the author's hand has become so evident.
posted
Of course, there is a time an place for everything, even coincidence. If at any time you can make something more difficult for your MC through coincidence, do it.
Is the hero driving to a get-away plane, being chased by helicopter through the desert while attempting to succor a wounded comrade?
Kick him. Kick him hard.
Suddenly, a stray shot from the helicopter hits a tire. The car careens into a ditch. the character has to drag his wounded friend through the desert to the small airforce base.
posted
Lengthy thread for one that started this morning. Let me see what I can comment on...
I don't see nuclear terrorists having a flat tire as coincidence...it's "unforseen circumstances." They couldnit *know* they would get a flat...they could plan on what to do if they can't get their bomb to the rendezvous point in time. For a real life example...it seems to me the 9 / 11 terrorists had counted on better coordination of their plane takeovers and attacks. One plane was delayed, giving passengers time to learn of what was going on and to mount a counterattack.
"Star Wars" trivia...in the novelization (and possibly filmed but not included in the final cut), there's a scene with Luke and his buddies discussing, more or less, getting off Tatooine and joining the Rebel Alliance. So Luke was looking for some kind of change, pondering trying to make it happen...and change that was, in some form, inevitable once the only home he'd ever known was destroyed.
Coincidences do happen, even right here. Someone here mentioned the [other] CIA the other day, which I happen to know pretty well, from living nearby it for many years. Certainly this is a coincidence in the classical sense: surely this person didn't come on board here knowing I knew this place, and surely (and certainly) I didn't come on board knowing someone else here knew about it...
quote:The droid that broke did not break by coincidence. R2D2 did that on purpose.
How did R2D2 know Lars would choose that droid? It seems you're a little desperate to say no good story can have any coincidence. Part of the whole point of Star wars is that events are guided by some unseen force. Except for Han Solo's destiny, of course.
posted
the definition of a coincidence is a series of events with no causal connection. that being said, the definition of fiction is real life with some tweaks. so it is quite plausable to have a coincidence. I know that my books are full of them. is it a coincidence that right before a war with an alien species breaks out, all communication with earth ceases? or is one of the Humans a traitor? see? coincidences help advance the plot. it adds subtlety that may not otherwise be there. Ill finish this later. gotta go home and do my homework.
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posted
But what about running out of gas on the way to the wedding in The Graduate? Was that coincidence or merely British humor?
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posted
When Ben ran out of gas in THE GRADUATE it is humor. Just before that he was at a gas station asking for directions. The attendant asked him if he needed gas. He said no, I'm in a hurry. It's not ha-ha-ha humor. Just irony. It made me smile, at least.
But doesn't this question beg another question? Are we not more willing to put up with coincidence/luck/chance in some genres but not in others?
[This message has been edited by Karloff (edited January 17, 2006).]
posted
I think a part of Signs often overlooked is that the father never stopped believing in signs, but certain events were a sign to him that God hated him. So he was in a fundamentally conflicted state.
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posted
You're missing the point, Christine. In "real life" so to speak, the droids would have been sold to someone else, the red R2 unit would not have broken down just as the Jawas were packing up, Darth Vader would have caught up to Leia over some other planet, Luke would have gotten Artoo and headed straight home and thus been killed by Stormtroopers, Ben would have been sitting at home instead of just where he needed to be to save Luke from the Sandpeople. Besides, we didn't discover Ben's reason for being on Tatooine for another several movies, and not even in the first trilogy. From that standpoint, Ben and Luke's residence on the same planet is coincidence.
DO I really have to mention the undefeatable super-weapon that, oh by the way, just happens to have this silly little exhaust port? Or that the T-16 has such similar controls to a high-performance space fighter that it allows a farmboy with zilcho combat experience to survive in a combat zone against undoubtedly veteran pilots?
There really are a lot of coincidences, but they're *plausible* ones, giving us just enough to suspend our disbelief that we don't notice them, or care if we do. In certain types of storytelling, this works. In other types, you are quite right, the use of coincidence can be very jarring to the reader and should not be used, or used very carefully.
posted
You could mention the silly little exhaust port but that isn't coincidence...it's unbelievably poor planning. It is a known and widely joked about problem with the show, but I don't see what makes it coincidental.
"In "real life" so to speak, the droids would have been sold to someone else, "
Who? They were headed straight for a remote part of the planet where Owen and Obiwan were about the only people in residence. They *might* have hit another remote farm first but it's not unbelievable or incredibly coincidental that they did. If anything, this is a mild stretch.
"the red R2 unit would not have broken down just as the Jawas were packing up,"
This might be coincidence. If so, it's the only one so far.
"Darth Vader would have caught up to Leia over some other planet,"
What other planets did she visit? To my knowledge, Tatooine was her destination. You don't "catch up" with someone in hyperspace. The story made that quite clear, so unless she stopped off for supplies on some other planet, there was no where else for Vader to catch up with her. And even if she did stop off someplace else, there's nor eason to believe he would have found here there instead of here.
" Luke would have gotten Artoo and headed straight home and thus been killed by Stormtroopers, "
Why? The sand people came on them as soon as he caught up with R2. If you refering to him staying behind and spying on them, his adventurous personality was already well established by this time. It might have been stupid, but not coincidental.
"Ben would have been sitting at home instead of just where he needed to be to save Luke from the Sandpeople. "
No, he wouldn't. Ben was quite capable with the force, and the force would have told him to be where he needed to be. If you don't like the magic system then fine, but this fits in quite competently with the established magical system.
"Besides, we didn't discover Ben's reason for being on Tatooine for another several movies, and not even in the first trilogy."
Not for sure, but we could have easily guessed and I did. Perhaps that information should have been there, but it doesn't make it coincidence it makes it bad placement of information.
posted
Your response makes my point: There's just enough plausibility to make what ordinarily would be seen as coincidence into a story element. We don't care that Artoo and Threpio could have landed on the other side of the planet instead of just close enough to the Lars farm to be delivered there intact by the Jawas. They need to get to Luke and Ben quick, so Lucas just plops them down there to keep the action moving. It would be a little too obvious for them just to drop almost on top of the farm, so Lucas has them land a ways away and the Jawas show up to give them an involuntary lift.
Lucas needed a reason to get Ben and Luke together and make sure Luke was anywhere but home when the Stormtroopers arrived, so presto, a group of Sandpeople happen to be wandering by, Luke gets an attack of the stupids to go have a look (when the night before he was well aware of the danger), gets whopped uside the head, and Ben just also happens to be wandering about. If any one of the three parties isn't there, the story falls apart. Again, we don't care they're all conveniently - I wuold even say coincidientally - close because it serves the charaterization of Luke, the storyline as a whole and, once Luke realizes his family is in danger, the drama of the threat posed by the Empire.
Going back to your "terrorist truck" incident: If they're driving a brand-new truck over a highway and blow a tire so they're caught, yeah, that would strain credulity. But put them on a bumpy back road where they run over some debris a blow a tire, and we're willing to overlook the convenient timing for the sake of the story.
posted
krazykiter, it's obvious that you have no idea what I meant by coincidence. I could even be off-sync with the rest of the world on my own definition, it's happened before, but now we're arguing semantics and that degrades a discussion into uselessness.
posted
Not saying here that SIGNS was good writing (because I agree that it was poor science fiction if nothing else), but I submit that the movie was about coincidences and that what it was saying about coincidences is that God (ca)uses coincidences to help people.
Whether that is something anyone believes is another question, but that's what I understood the movie to be saying when I watched it.
posted
I think you're right, Kathleen, but I disliked the movie for that very reason.
Well, that and the fact that it was so misadvertised it wasn't even funny...I went to an alien attacks movie and ended up watching a sappy religious film.
posted
Well, its what I got too, and it's why I mentioned it. Only to add that the film indicates that maybe there is no such thing as a coincidence.
However, it was not really a sci-fi movie.
Unfortunately it used a sci-fi motif. It was not essential that the aliens were aliens, replace them with almost anyhting and the story would not be significantly altered. The story was about the meaning someone attributes to a coincidence.
This thread is similar to the "Why are we so obsessed with stories" thread. The human mind is always looking for meaning in stories. That's why I asked, what does the coincidence mean? A pure, meaningless coincidence in fiction that has no SIGNIFICANCE to the story should be left out. But any coincidence you INVENT for the story that has SIGNIFICANCE to the story begins to MEAN something. Your INVENTED coincidence has a PURPOSE that the reader, though not necessarily the characters, can discern.
BTW: I thought Signs was okay because of the thoughts and discussion it provoked.
quote: I think a part of Signs often overlooked is that the father never stopped believing in signs, but certain events were a sign to him that God hated him. So he was in a fundamentally conflicted state.
What a great point.
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited January 18, 2006).]
posted
One thing I want to be sure doesn't get lost in this discussion is that coincidence, like any other element of a story, has to be used carefully, and is only going to work well in certain types of storytelling. My point is there's a distinct difference between coincidences that artificially solve a given problem for a character and plausible ones that either 1)allow the plot to move along in some way, or 2)give a character a chance to solve a problem as opposed to being the solution to the problem.
If the Death Star was truly impregnable, Luke (and the Rebellion) wouldn't have stood a chance. So, by coincidence, the Death Star suffers from a really bad design flaw, giving Luke the chance to blow it up. Artoo and Threepio need to meet up with Luke, so instead of landing them right on top of the Lars farm and making the coincidence blazing obvious, they crash in the general vicinity. By coincidence, the cosmic junk dealers are close enough to give them a lift. Luke needs to be anywhere but home when the Stormtroopers arrive, so by coincidence, a group of Sandpeople wander by so Luke can go look at them instead of packing up Artoo and heading home. Ben just happens to be nearby when Luke needs rescuing from the Sandpeople. There's a trash chute in the detention block when the heroes need to escape. Darth Vader's markmanship wavers and he blows up Artoo instead of Luke's X-wing. The probabilities of all these (and other) things working out just so at just the right time are so small they make the Heart of Gold look like a rational means of space travel. But they're needed to move the story along and they're just plausible enough so they work in the space opera/adventure serial genre Lucas uses to create his story.
Apparently, coincidence is much more like irony...difficult to pin down a definition on and come up with examples.
Look, things happen. Lots of things happen all the time. The chances of any one thing happening is entirely improbable. The chances of me being here and making this post are so minimal as to boggle the imagination. First, I had to be born to the right parents at the right time in the right place. Then, I had to be nurtured in such a way that I developed a love for writing. Then I had to ignore that love of writing long enough to go to college and seek a degree in Computer Science where I met a man who I fell in love with. This man had to decide he liked the idea of me being a writer and liked what I wrote and wanted to encourage that. Then he had to decide to support that by looking for resources on the internet and stumbling across this site. It probably didn't hurt that we had both read and enjoyed Orson Scott Card's work, which also had very little chance of ever having been written or published, let alone widely read at the exact time that he and I were born and met.
Very improbable. Lots of random chance. Not implausible, it's just the way it worked out. But coincidence? Coincidence requires a little bit more, I would think.
Shortly after I started posting here one of the other members, GZ, figured out through a series of comments I made that I was the very Christine she knew from college. She came to thie site all on her own and I never even knew she liked to write. I don't think she knew I did. The fact that our both being here had nothing to do with the fact that we knew one another, and yet we did, is a coincidence.
It was certainly convenient, maybe even implausibly so, that the Death Star had a fatal flaw but the only way it would have been a coincidence would be if they just randomly went to attack the thing with no plan and a random shot happened to go in that hole and blow the whole thing up. Now *that* is the sort of coincidence I'm talking about...the sort that has no place in fiction.
posted
I'm with Christine down to the wire on this one. To too narrowly define coincidence is to relegate a lot of undeserving fiction to the scrap heap.
Been reading a lot of Clive Cussler of late. It'd be impossible to get his small band of NUMA people into the sort of scrapes and escapes they get into and out of without some reliance on loosely defined coincidences.
For instance, in one book, some of his characters are set adrift with just the right confluence of aspects -- weather, currents, equipment -- that they reach a small rocky island. What are Cussler's choices? Do away with each of those aspects and let his characters die adrift? That would hardly advance the story.
Fiction writing involves a measure of pulling the strings of coincidence in an acceptable manner. With Cussler's drifters, it'd be far less acceptable to have them find another drifting boat full of supplies floating around the ocean with them.
Coincidence is simply another tool writers use to hone their skills.
posted
That's what I mean by 'there are no coincidences in fiction. They're all in there because you put them there, the question is why did you put them there.
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