Clever or Contrived?

[fifty5]

Here's an example: A friend of the antagonist's intinded victim just happens to be driving along the road at the same time said antagonist is trying to hitch a ride. The antagonist was trying to find a way to get close to his intended victim, and it has now been handed to him on a plate.

Does that sound contrived to you? Or a reasonable plot development?

It must be taken into consideration that the antagonist was close to the driver's place of work at the time, so the chances of them coming across each other was pretty high. Does that make a difference?

More a rewording of BlackShanglan's point than anything really new, but...

For any story to be worth telling, it has to describe something unusual (OK, there are a few exceptions, but then the way of telling it has to be unusual - Diary of a Nobody, Adrian Mole, etc.) - so, like Black says, you do start with 'capital'.

Another point is that it is possible to supply reasons - either conscious planning by the characters, or by making the randomness apparent. eg (Taking Colly's example) mention the delay due to the call, don't say why, but let the reader know, by implication, that it's going to be significant.

A further trick on the same line is to explain the concurrent coincidences - not only is it unlikely that B is in the right place at the right time (unless A planned and worked for that)) but it's also perfectly likely that he'd just drive past. If something already happened to predispose stopping versus driving past, then the 'capital' expended is less.

Finally, whether it's a pratt-fall or a murder, if the reader can see it coming, you're building suspense - and the reader has already accepted the unlikely event before it happens. Instead of an "Oh yeah!!??", disbelief reaction, you can get a release of tension - ideal for adding an extra twist that _hadn't_ been signalled, to take the tension back even higher.

Virtually any coincidence can be made acceptable, depending on how you write it.

IMHO

Eff (Who reads a lot, even if he doesn't write much.)

 

[Liar]

Re: Re: Clever or Contrived?

Virtually any coincidence can be made acceptable, depending on how you write it.

Just seconding this. Even in a story with a serious tone, an unlikely event can be made believable.

Everything in our lives is a series or random events, and how we react to them. And some of them are very "yeah right" in nature. Granted, there goes a million likely events for every unlikely one, but they do happen, and they do change our lives. Some couples have really interresting stories of how they met. Two former high school sweets years later found themselves, both recently escaped from separate bad marriages, next to each other in a hotel lounge bar on the other side of the world. Stuff like that.

What fiction does is to capture moments like those, tweak the drama of it to smudge out imperfection and ask us to take it for granted. Selling those ideas is imo what good fiction do.

#L

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

In the NaNo piece I'm working on, I mock the cliches that I use and have done similar games in the past. In an old play, the ending is a complete Deus Ex Machina involving something that shouldn't be available being available in order to make the visual easier to perform on a stage. The reason for this is because of one of the character's, a Mr. Deus, homicidal ex-wife Machina. Thus the cliche became a pun.

In the NaNo one, I just mock the cliches, sometimes by having the narrator creating a bizarre explanation or clarification or offering little hopes and other times by having the characters themselves react to them. When the psychic cop character has a vision in which she's floating in blackness with voices, she's grating her teeth at her lack of control and utter incapacitation. In other sections I just openly offer a separate view of popular cliches, so far hitting sci-fi, fantasy, cop drama, superheroes, underground crime syndicates, and evil overlords.


In other words, sometimes you can make the cliche work for you if you need to use it. And the readers will also likely forgive cliches or espected plot developments in places if the overall story is orginal and the characters are engrossing. Just my 2 pence.

 

[Sabledrake]

I know just what you mean, Lou (and I've read Amara, if it's the one recently re-released by Leisure as Wake the Dead ... and some of it did seem pretty far-fetched).

Or look at John Saul's Black Lightning ... Saul normally writes stories set in small close-knit towns where it's a little more believable that any one character will stumble across something pertinent, but when he sets Black Lightning in Seattle and _still_ has the protagonist be the first one to discover, in one of the larger and busier parks, the body of her neighbor who was killed by the guy who's after _her_ ... enh. Didn't work for me. In the typical Saulian small town, maybe okay yeah. But in Seattle? Too much of a stretch.

There's no telling what will bug me in a story. In another Laymon, Body Rides, I had no trouble accepting the magic telepathy bracelet but kept scoffing to myself about how easily the characters, especially the girlfriend, fell happily into the three-way romance with the waitress chick. Or in SPY KIDS II, of all things, I accepted all the ludicrous gadgets and monsters without a hitch because that's what the movie was about, but sat there saying "What kind of parents would let their 13-year-old daughter attend a Presidential dinner in that midriff-baring outfit? Puh-leeze!"

The impossible coincidence seems most prevalent in the horror / monster movie genre. Some of those things have become so common that they're essentially staples ... if you're on an island (Jurassic Park) or a deep-sea drilling rig (The Abyss) or in a closed-for-the-season hotel (The Shining) or whatever, there's going to be a massive storm at the crucial moment to prevent you leaving and prevent any help from getting to you until enough time has passed for the story to be told. We get to expect that sort of thing. The car won't start, the phone is dead ... necessary cliches or else, if the characters could escape or send for help, there wouldn't be as much of a story.

In your case, the chance meeting, it does seem a little bit of a stretch, but maybe a forgiveable one if it's done carefully. I have a similar problem in one of my recent books; it just so happens that the vampire hunter and the girl targeted by vampires turn up at the same place at the same time? I mean, for the sake of the story I have to get these two together, and coincidences do happen.

I've offered before but I'll say again -- I will be glad to beta-read for you, just say the word!

Sabledrake

 

[gauchecritic]

I take it that was a facetious response.

If it wasn't, thanks so much for the injection of confidence.

Looks like I'm going to have to stop being oblique and obtuse (not forgetting obese) and also stop posting when drunk.

The point was that horror asks that the reader not just suspend their disbelief, but put it in a shredder and then burn it. To take wild imaginings as fact. To wholly absorb a ghastly premise.

In order for them to do this, everything else in the story, the everyday occurences that have any similarity at all to the reader's life must ring true.

So someone picking up a hitchhiker who is covered in blood and then be central to the murderer's plans isn't exactly a normal occurence. Hence the background music analogy.

The way around this, that I can see, is to give the driver a job of Fireman, Nurse, Policeman, Paramedic etc. A job where they are used to dealing with blood soaked people and witnessing car wrecks and the like as a weekly happening.

The problem you have then is that they wouldn't drive from the scene.

To answer the question, why did you need to ask it? It obviously didn't seem right and you would throw the book across the room if you were reading it yourself.

Gauche

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Thanks so much, Dr Mab.

You've made me think that maybe what I have written is ok. The thing is, the antagonist is just looking for a lift, from anyone. The guy that comes along is unknown to him, and he only finds out much later on (after he has "jumped" into his body) that the guy is actually a friend of the boyfriend of his ex-wife - his ultimate intended victim.

Lou

If you can use that relationship to explain what the guy is doing on the road at that specific time, then you're home free.

---dr.M.

 

[Guest]

I understand that face description you did in my thread now Even just from those two tidbits of your story, I am inclined to say that it works. "Body thieves" really haven't been overdone, defiantely not from a black magic view. I hate it when they use technology for body stealing.

Anyways, good luck with your story, and stop doubting in yourself so much. Hell, you have a fan base, you've earned it somehow right?

Yep! That explains why he knew she wouldn't recognise him.

Thanks so much for that, Tolyk, you're a sweetheart.

Lou

 

[Guest]

Re: Re: Clever or Contrived?

More a rewording of BlackShanglan's point than anything really new, but...

For any story to be worth telling, it has to describe something unusual (OK, there are a few exceptions, but then the way of telling it has to be unusual - Diary of a Nobody, Adrian Mole, etc.) - so, like Black says, you do start with 'capital'.

Another point is that it is possible to supply reasons - either conscious planning by the characters, or by making the randomness apparent. eg (Taking Colly's example) mention the delay due to the call, don't say why, but let the reader know, by implication, that it's going to be significant.

A further trick on the same line is to explain the concurrent coincidences - not only is it unlikely that B is in the right place at the right time (unless A planned and worked for that)) but it's also perfectly likely that he'd just drive past. If something already happened to predispose stopping versus driving past, then the 'capital' expended is less.

Finally, whether it's a pratt-fall or a murder, if the reader can see it coming, you're building suspense - and the reader has already accepted the unlikely event before it happens. Instead of an "Oh yeah!!??", disbelief reaction, you can get a release of tension - ideal for adding an extra twist that _hadn't_ been signalled, to take the tension back even higher.

Virtually any coincidence can be made acceptable, depending on how you write it.

IMHO

Eff (Who reads a lot, even if he doesn't write much.)

Thanks for your input, Eff. Your take on it is much appreciated.

As you said, I really do think it all comes down to this: "Virtually any coincidence can be made acceptable, depending on how you write it."

If I do decide to go with it, I'd better make sure I write it damn well!

Lou

 

[Guest]

Re: Re: Re: Clever or Contrived?

Just seconding this. Even in a story with a serious tone, an unlikely event can be made believable.

Everything in our lives is a series or random events, and how we react to them. And some of them are very "yeah right" in nature. Granted, there goes a million likely events for every unlikely one, but they do happen, and they do change our lives. Some couples have really interresting stories of how they met. Two former high school sweets years later found themselves, both recently escaped from separate bad marriages, next to each other in a hotel lounge bar on the other side of the world. Stuff like that.

What fiction does is to capture moments like those, tweak the drama of it to smudge out imperfection and ask us to take it for granted. Selling those ideas is imo what good fiction do.

#L

I completely agree, thanks, Liar.

Lou

 

[Guest]

In the NaNo piece I'm working on, I mock the cliches that I use and have done similar games in the past. In an old play, the ending is a complete Deus Ex Machina involving something that shouldn't be available being available in order to make the visual easier to perform on a stage. The reason for this is because of one of the character's, a Mr. Deus, homicidal ex-wife Machina. Thus the cliche became a pun.

In the NaNo one, I just mock the cliches, sometimes by having the narrator creating a bizarre explanation or clarification or offering little hopes and other times by having the characters themselves react to them. When the psychic cop character has a vision in which she's floating in blackness with voices, she's grating her teeth at her lack of control and utter incapacitation. In other sections I just openly offer a separate view of popular cliches, so far hitting sci-fi, fantasy, cop drama, superheroes, underground crime syndicates, and evil overlords.


In other words, sometimes you can make the cliche work for you if you need to use it. And the readers will also likely forgive cliches or espected plot developments in places if the overall story is orginal and the characters are engrossing. Just my 2 pence.

Thanks, Lucifer. LOL! Your NaNo novel sounds very good! I love that kind of thing.

I am so grateful for the input of so many on this subject. Most people seem to be saying much the same thing, that is: it can work if you write it well and make it work.

Lou

 

[Guest]

I know just what you mean, Lou (and I've read Amara, if it's the one recently re-released by Leisure as Wake the Dead ... and some of it did seem pretty far-fetched).

Or look at John Saul's Black Lightning ... Saul normally writes stories set in small close-knit towns where it's a little more believable that any one character will stumble across something pertinent, but when he sets Black Lightning in Seattle and _still_ has the protagonist be the first one to discover, in one of the larger and busier parks, the body of her neighbor who was killed by the guy who's after _her_ ... enh. Didn't work for me. In the typical Saulian small town, maybe okay yeah. But in Seattle? Too much of a stretch.

There's no telling what will bug me in a story. In another Laymon, Body Rides, I had no trouble accepting the magic telepathy bracelet but kept scoffing to myself about how easily the characters, especially the girlfriend, fell happily into the three-way romance with the waitress chick. Or in SPY KIDS II, of all things, I accepted all the ludicrous gadgets and monsters without a hitch because that's what the movie was about, but sat there saying "What kind of parents would let their 13-year-old daughter attend a Presidential dinner in that midriff-baring outfit? Puh-leeze!"

The impossible coincidence seems most prevalent in the horror / monster movie genre. Some of those things have become so common that they're essentially staples ... if you're on an island (Jurassic Park) or a deep-sea drilling rig (The Abyss) or in a closed-for-the-season hotel (The Shining) or whatever, there's going to be a massive storm at the crucial moment to prevent you leaving and prevent any help from getting to you until enough time has passed for the story to be told. We get to expect that sort of thing. The car won't start, the phone is dead ... necessary cliches or else, if the characters could escape or send for help, there wouldn't be as much of a story.

In your case, the chance meeting, it does seem a little bit of a stretch, but maybe a forgiveable one if it's done carefully. I have a similar problem in one of my recent books; it just so happens that the vampire hunter and the girl targeted by vampires turn up at the same place at the same time? I mean, for the sake of the story I have to get these two together, and coincidences do happen.

I've offered before but I'll say again -- I will be glad to beta-read for you, just say the word!

Sabledrake

Sabledrake! Thank you!

I was hoping for your unput here, as I know you've read a lot of the same books as me. Yes, Amara is To Wake The Dead in the US. I did like the book, but some parts just didn't sit comfortably with me. I mean, why did she walk out of the town and end up at the blind woman's house? Her motivations for doing so just didn't seem clear enough to me. It felt like two separate stories hashed together as one (with the short "The Pit" shoved in the middle. ).

Funny you should mention Body Rides. I did kind of get my idea for the novel from that, but it is very different. Graham Masterton has written a few stories on a similar thing, but using voodoo and blck magic. My take on the theme is very different, and I'm not sure I can do it justice, as they did.

You are so right, readers of the horror genre in particular do kind of come to expect a certain amount of cliche and coincidence. Maybe mine isn't that bad afterall.

Lou

P.S. Yes! I'd love you to beta-read this novel for me. I think it will be your kind of thing - pretty Laymonesque in feel. I'll let you know how I go with it.

 

[Guest]

Looks like I'm going to have to stop being oblique and obtuse (not forgetting obese) and also stop posting when drunk.

The point was that horror asks that the reader not just suspend their disbelief, but put it in a shredder and then burn it. To take wild imaginings as fact. To wholly absorb a ghastly premise.

In order for them to do this, everything else in the story, the everyday occurences that have any similarity at all to the reader's life must ring true.

So someone picking up a hitchhiker who is covered in blood and then be central to the murderer's plans isn't exactly a normal occurence. Hence the background music analogy.

The way around this, that I can see, is to give the driver a job of Fireman, Nurse, Policeman, Paramedic etc. A job where they are used to dealing with blood soaked people and witnessing car wrecks and the like as a weekly happening.

The problem you have then is that they wouldn't drive from the scene.

To answer the question, why did you need to ask it? It obviously didn't seem right and you would throw the book across the room if you were reading it yourself.

Gauche

First of all:



Very good point. Hmmm, I really do need to let the reader know what his job is. I have mentioned that he is on his way home from work, and that that workplace is close by. It is also the work place of the muderer's ex-wife's boyfriend. They do, in fact, work on an Army base, which will become apparent later in the novel. Yeah, that could work. I'll merely put in a passing reference to the motorist's place of work. Someone who works for the Army is pretty likely to stop their car to help someone in obvious distress.

I have got around the problem of them not wanting to drive from the scene, by the fact that where the guy is picked up is not the scene of the "accident". That happened much deeper in the forest. The guy ran from there, to the main road, to try to get "help" (although he doesn't want help - he wants to get away from the murder scene).

Thanks for your input, Gauche.

Lou

 

[Guest]

If you can use that relationship to explain what the guy is doing on the road at that specific time, then you're home free.

---dr.M.

Yep, and answering Gauche's post, I think I have found a way to do that. The murderer's ex-wife's boyfriend (that is such a mouthful!) is a work-mate of the guy driving the car.

The murderer knows where the boyfriend works, and even followed the two lovers a couple of days previously to the same area (that's how he knew it was a good secluded spot to "bump off" someone who was in his way).

It's all too complex to explain in a few words, but this thread really has helped to work it all out in my mind.

Thanks, again,

Lou

 

[fifty5]

Re: Re: Re: Clever or Contrived?

Thanks for your input, Eff. Your take on it is much appreciated.

As you said, I really do think it all comes down to this: "Virtually any coincidence can be made acceptable, depending on how you write it."

If I do decide to go with it, I'd better make sure I write it damn well!

Lou

What dr.M said!

Something, anything, that can predispose the reader towards swallowing the event. And something, anything, (unless it blows your cover on something to be revealed later) that helps them anticipate the coincidence can make them feel clever-clever instead of dismissing the tale as the opposite.

Making them (readers) feel clever-clever - then turning the tables on them - can be even better!

Just don't get bogged down over 1 issue. There's 50k to write - as long as the whole is good, readers will forgive a few convenient coincidences. It is only if they are pissed with the whole that they will take time to unravel an individual issue (or just leave).

Keep on truckin!

Eff

 

[Guest]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Clever or Contrived?

What dr.M said!

Something, anything, that can predispose the reader towards swallowing the event. And something, anything, (unless it blows your cover on something to be revealed later) that helps them anticipate the coincidence can make them feel clever-clever instead of dismissing the tale as the opposite.

Making them (readers) feel clever-clever - then turning the tables on them - can be even better!

Just don't get bogged down over 1 issue. There's 50k to write - as long as the whole is good, readers will forgive a few convenient coincidences. It is only if they are pissed with the whole that they will take time to unravel an individual issue (or just leave).

Keep on truckin!

Eff

Cheers, Eff!

I'm just gonna get on and write the damn thing now, then come back to it once it's done. If I decide to re-write a section (taking on board what you and others have said) then I most probably will.

Oh, I can do fuc... Oh, you said truckin. Ok, I can do that, too.

Lou

 

[fifty5]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Clever or Contrived?

Cheers, Eff!