Accidental/co-incidence meetings of characters in infidelity or incest stories

[KimAwakened]

Time and again I see a big role being played by co-incidence or happenstance when it comes to characters hooking up. Writers seem to think they can simply bring in the big gun of blind chance to solve all their problems. This thread is a typical example: https://forum.literotica.com/threads/yes-they-like-pina-coladas.1611814/

I wonder if they don't stretch the reader's suspension of disbelief just too far sometimes.

Are there devices and tactics that can be used to make the "accident" more plausible? Maybe this should be on the AH forum.

 

[Rob_Royale]

- Someone deliberately setting them up, manipulating behind the scenes.
- A convenient location. The local hotel is close and familiar. In such a place, two like-minded people could meet accidentally and I don't think it stretches credulity.
- It isn't an accident. One person is following the other with purpose, then acts surprised when they meet. Maybe not obvious at that moment.
- A common interest. A convention or concert hall or store they both frequent.
- A friend in common. The friend has invited them both (separately) to use the beach house whenever they want to. They both just show up on July 4th to watch the fireworks over the water.

Yeah, this would be better in the AH but the folks here can be be good plotters even if they aren't all writers.

 

[Carnevil9]

I don't have a problem with a story having one big leap of faith. Strange things happen every day, just not a lot of them to the same person, right in a row. If you premise the story on one unusual coincidence, but then proceed logically and reasonably from there out, I think it works just fine. I call it "the big what-if?" Every story gets one, but no more.

Look at it from the other perspective: if a story were to only include reasonably expected, perfectly normal, everyday things that happen to all of us all the time, it wouldn't be very interesting, or much of a story.

 

[Husky_Embrace]

I know it isn't yours, but a son/daughter of 20 that is already in a crappy marriage? There isn't coincidence there...

I agree with @Carnevil9. Coincidence is part of life, but also not so much of a coincidence. My partner isn't from my country. It is a coincidence I met exactly them, but in the grand scheme of things it is likely they would meet someone on their travels.

That is why in the grand scheme of things it is likely that a parent meets one of their 18+ children on a blind date. It is a coincidence, but it is very likely to happen or have happened somewhere.

Then again, you can go the "on purpose" route. If we keep going with the example, maybe the website was mentioned once in their vicinity. Maybe the parent opened the browser and the website was still open, but logged out. That sparked the idea. Maybe they know of each other that their marriage is crap, and decided to help each other. "Have you seen this site? It can help!" Later they don't realise they're talking to each other. An age filter set wrong or something.

Coincidence is a nice tool, though you can easily give a legitimate reason to avoid obvious coincidences that force your story into being. If possible I would avoid coincidence, but it can still be a legitimate way to write your story into being.

I'm making a story based on an email that was sent to me by mistake, where I was offered a job as an escort. The description is clearly about a woman. Coincidence? You bet! Has it happened, and will it happen again? Most definitely...

 

[sirhugs]

Do you consider being forced to share a hotel room (or tent) an accident?

 

[KindredFlame]

Time and again I see a big role being played by co-incidence or happenstance when it comes to characters hooking up. Writers seem to think they can simply bring in the big gun of blind chance to solve all their problems. This thread is a typical example: https://forum.literotica.com/threads/yes-they-like-pina-coladas.1611814/

I wonder if they don't stretch the reader's suspension of disbelief just too far sometimes.

Are there devices and tactics that can be used to make the "accident" more plausible? Maybe this should be on the AH forum.

I understand where you are cumming from. Accidentally meeting someone dose happens. Strangers on a train type of thing.

For example I went shopping recently in a shop that I had not been in before but I walked around the store picked up what I needed.

It was not till I got to the check out that I saw a young lady that I knew from somewhere but I couldn’t put a finger on it.


When I got in front of the young lady serving it dawned on both of us that the last time we met we were both naked and my face was not looking at her face.

We made small talk while she scanned my shopping and I bagged it. Then all we did after this was wink at each other then parted ways.

Ok nothing else happened but I can assure you that this new shop is on my list of favourites now in the hope that things move on.

 

[LoneMilf]

I think this part is more important - it's not the coincidence of the meeting that suspends disbelief, it's how the characters suddenly become atrracted to each other just because they meet in unusual circumstances that does it.

 

[KindredFlame]

I think this part is more important - it's not the coincidence of the meeting that suspends disbelief, it's how the characters suddenly become atrracted to each other just because they meet in unusual circumstances that does it.

Building of characters is one of the best bit, also setting up the meeting. Instant attraction dose happen also. I have sat in a coffee shop and scanned the room and there is just one person that gets my juices flowing immediately.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

I've seen more than one where Hubby/Wife got to a sex club and run into their offspring/spouse engaged in some sort of acts. One thing leads to another ...

 

[KimAwakened]

Do you consider being forced to share a hotel room (or tent) an accident?

Not sure why you raise that particular matter but, whereas maybe not an accident, it IS unusual. I mean... how many times have you personally checked into a hotel and found yourself unexpectedly obliged to share a room..?

I've seen it said repeatedly on here and elsewhere that the essence of "drawing a reader in" to your story is plausibility. Logically it goes therefore that the wilder your characters and plot, the less likely your reader is to invest any belief.

I should say I'm talking genuine stories here. Of course, if all you want from a reader is for him/her to struggle from the beginning to the end on the vague promise of a bit of wank material...

 

[Carnevil9]

I don't think plausibility is all that important in writing. Wizard of Oz wasn't very plausible. Nor was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, or Animal Farm, or pretty much anything by HP Lovecraft. Yet they have endured over the ages. What's most important in a story is that it be interesting.

 

[LupusDei]

We didn't have a sports field as our school was cramped into the heart of the old town (and only had 6 official car parking spaces), so we had those "sports day" events when more or less the whole school traveled to a city's stadium to do PE normatives and such. It was a chaotic affair full of annoyances but also opportunities...

...after my feeble attempts at running on my flat feet, I went with a group of guys, to the place of one of my classmates who lived nearby all alone after his parents and young sister died in an accident. We had a couple of beers, listened to music, watched videos. I was the first from the group standing up and saying I have to go home. Nobody challenged me, but I had other ideas.

I had to hasten my step to catch up with the tram, and was, or would be the last to enter, but She was running from the opposite direction, so I hung in the door despite the tram ringing his bells to hold it for her, and she come into my arms running... not quite. But we had a pleasant ride together back to the center.

Accident? Yes. Yet no, I went with those guys waiting for Her. No, there was no way for me to know when she will get out of the stadium, what she planned to do after, nothing. It wasn't a setup, just my best guess and pure intuition math. It did play out exactly, as best it could, or perhaps no, maybe I should have let the tram go and we would have waited for the next together, or, who knows, did something else entirely. Anyway all else was how I did -- or didn't -- take advantage of the opportunity.

***

Couple years later...
I knew my relationship with my then girlfriend was on the out, but that she will dump me on the middle of a dance floor of a shady small town discotheque in favor of an older friend from her previous school who shared my first name... well... I didn't stage a public fight of two John's although I had the opportunity. I went away.

It was 3 AM in a middle-of-nowhere town, the first train back to capital wasn't until 6. I walked out to the riverbank and spent my time dropping "pancakes" with pebbles. She -- the girl from the tram above -- walked out from the sunrise half a mile upstream slowly approaching along the river, dressed in flimsy little sundress. In the cold misty morning she should be freezing. She looked like that.

"John? What are you doing here?" She acted all surprised coming into easy talking distance.

"Waiting for you," I sad. At that point it was whole truth already. I gave her my jacket she put on without a word.

Accident? Totally. One you can't probably really put into a story, as that's such a deus-ex-machina moment.

... but no, we don't end up together then either.

 

[SteelPoint]

I don't think plausibility is all that important in writing. Wizard of Oz wasn't very plausible. Nor was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, or Animal Farm, or pretty much anything by HP Lovecraft. Yet they have endured over the ages. What's most important in a story is that it be interesting.

I don't see where Kim advocated making a story devoid of interest.

The two are not mutually exclusive... and some might challenge your assertion that interest is the most important. After all, what often makes a story interesting is that you are led skilfully by the author to believe in the "reality" of what is happening.

She quoted my post from last year which harked back to the Rupert Holmes "Escape" song - and I admit openly that I made use of the "total co-incidence" device without troubling myself over the detail - which I remember irked me at the time. I felt it was a lazy "out".

 

[GlennJenko]

If you premise the story on one unusual coincidence, but then proceed logically and reasonably from there out, I think it works just fine. I call it "the big what-if?" Every story gets one, but no more.

This. I've personally heard of it as the "you get one thing for free rule" but it's essentially what you're saying. Readers will (usually) one thing as a catalyst or part of a story that is unlikely but necessary for the plot (as you say) but not anything more than that, because it won't be internally consistent or believable.

Wizard of Oz wasn't very plausible. Nor was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, or Animal Farm, or pretty much anything by HP Lovecraft. Yet they have endured over the ages.

These examples do fit into the above framework tbh. I can't talk much about Lovecraft, but in Wizard of Oz for example the "one thing for free" is that Oz is magical and everything that comes along with that.

I went shopping recently in a shop that I had not been in before but I walked around the store picked up what I needed.

It was not till I got to the check out that I saw a young lady that I knew from somewhere but I couldn’t put a finger on it.


When I got in front of the young lady serving it dawned on both of us that the last time we met we were both naked and my face was not looking at her face.

We made small talk while she scanned my shopping and I bagged it. Then all we did after this was wink at each other then parted ways.

Ok nothing else happened but I can assure you that this new shop is on my list of favourites now in the hope that things move on.

Ngl that's a really good story idea in and of itself.

 

[Hipshot1554]

I think this part is more important - it's not the coincidence of the meeting that suspends disbelief, it's how the characters suddenly become atrracted to each other just because they meet in unusual circumstances that does it.

Interesting, and true.

 

[Britva415]

I don't see where Kim advocated making a story devoid of interest.

I think Kim was saying that implausibility IS uninteresting.

 

[KimAwakened]

Only in a way.

I was simply noting my own reaction to stories which seem too far-fetched in some way or other. I just can't empathise with the characters or feel drawn into the posited situation. Eventually it's goodnight Vienna. I get bored and look for something else... so, in that sense yes, uninteresting.

I know I'm not alone in this.