Coincidences and YouTube

There's a video about a road rage incident in Bath currently going viral on YouTube. It's not me, but a coincidence that we share a name and live in Bath.

Coincidence happens all the time in real life. Sarah Duncan isn't an unusual name, and I expect there are several Sarah Duncans in Bath who are currently fretting in case anyone thinks the video features them.

But coincidences in stories...now, that's another matter. You can get away with a coincidence at the beginning - the initiating incident perhaps - but any further on and the reader will feel cheated. Put your coincidence at the end, particularly if it solves the overall plot, and they'll be furious.

I think it's because coincidence can makes the story all too convenient. We know they happen in real life, but fiction isn't real life, it's pretend real life. The author is choosing what to include or exclude, and most of the characters' 'real life' will be excluded: you don't often see characters doing the boring stuff like getting dressed or cooking every meal. Everything in the story has therefore been especially selected and choosing a handy coincidence to solve the plot feels like the author being lazy.

I believe that one of the reasons we read fiction is to see how other people handle problems. We like matching up our solutions against theirs. We also like to see characters working to achieve solutions. If the problem is solved by coincidence, then the reader is deprived of those two very basic pleasures and whatever the genre, that certainly isn't a happy ending.

Never Do Convenient Writing

So there I was sitting on the bus quietly reading The Legacy by Kathryn Webb when suddenly she did something so dreadful, so awful, I actually groaned. The main character is looking for the missing clue when she goes to visit some acquaintances, one of whom has just had a baby. They've been talking about babies and mutual friends for four pages.

Then, completely out of the blue, the new mother pipes up: "I was wondering if you'd tell me again why Grandpa Flag was called Flag? I know someone told me before when we were little - but I can't remember it properly now."

And whoppee, the answer is EXACTLY what the main character needed to complete the jigsaw puzzle of the plot.

Now, I accept this might happen. But I can't remember asking my mother a question about my family history without there being some sort of lead up to it. And for the previous four pages there hasn't been. This particular question is exceptionally useful, but so lacking in any context it's implausible for it to be there, except for the author's convenience. And at that point the story lost it for me. I couldn't take any of it seriously any more. Which was a pity, because I'd already read over 300 pages.

Convenient writing is the kiss of death for the reader. They've committed themselves to these characters and their story, the last thing they want to be reminded of is that it's all a contrivance. We're trying to create a real world here, with real people doing real stuff. It has to be plausible within its own terms (eg werewolves are fine, so long as what they can and can't do is consistent). One of the wonderful things about Philip Pullman's Northern Lights was that it created a world so real and consistent, it was a surprise that when I came back to my reality I didn't have my own daemon.

It's convenient when the doorbell/phone rings at the crucial moment (unless we've set up a character saying I'll call back tomorrow).

It's convenient when the characters need an X, and a passer by says I happen to have one here.

It's convenient when the missing information is handed to a character without them having to work at it.

In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, we know that Charlie Bucket is going to find the golden ticket because there won't be much of a story if he doesn't, but he doesn't find it on his first bar of chocolate - that would be convenient. Make the characters - and us - work for their opportunities, and you won't have your readers groaning on the bus.