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Avoiding the appearance of "too many coincidences"

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Wolf1066 Crazy Kiwi from New Zealand (Veteran) Relationship Status: Dancing with myself
Crazy Kiwi
#1: Jan 22nd 2015 at 11:23:21 AM

One of my stories has the characters coming together in unusual circumstances and I\'m wondering if it\'s going to come across as \"too many coincidences\".

I don\'t want to give too many details because of spoilers, so: basically they all wind up in roughly the same largeish area and it\'s established throughout the story that there is a reason they all wound up there and that they are not the only ones who have done so over the years.

They all turn up miles apart and over a period of two or three days but all wind up meeting up - which could seem \"coincidental\".

However I\'m planning to make it clear that two of them meet up because they both decided on the time-honoured plan of \"find a river and follow it out\" - and there\'s only one river in that area to follow - they then found one of the others because they could hear her shouting for help, another was right beside that same river they were following and the last heard them and tracked them down.

Later on, they find the corpses of two people (at separate locations) who had arrived some time before but had failed to survive - confirming that they aren\'t the only ones who have had this happen to them and that others haven\'t been as \"lucky\".

One of the corpses has a pack containing a few things that they find useful. Not a lot of things (and a lot of what\'s in the pack is of no use to them at all), but at least the pack itself is handy.

Later they find the ruins of a rough shelter showing that others have passed through this way before them.

So, without giving too much of the whys and wherefores, I hope I\'ve conveyed enough of the ideas.

Does it come across as too coincidental that they should all meet up over the period of a couple of days? Or have I given good enough reasons why they would find one another due to their own actions and decisions?

Does establishing that others have been there before sufficiently convey that it\'s not \"coincidental\" that they should all be there?

I\'ve got them meeting up at different times to a) make it easier to introduce the characters properly one at a time and b) avoid the coincidence of \"hey, we\'re all in exactly the same place at the same time.\"

YamiiDenryuu Since: Jan, 2010
#2: Jan 22nd 2015 at 11:45:46 AM

It sounds fine to me. You have a reason for each person to end up with the group. Besides, most stories need a bit of coincidence to set things up, if you think about it.

If you're still worried, maybe try shrinking the distance they're scattered over by a bit?

dreamofwritting Since: Jan, 2014
#3: Jan 22nd 2015 at 1:22:40 PM

My first thought was that I'm afraid we need to use...MATH.

There's a difference between giving a percentage out of 100 and giving the total amount of cases. For example, if i say that a condition affects 1% of today's humans, that may sound low, but if i say that 1% of today's humans means more that 70 million people, there's a change.

Tell that so much people going to the same place is simply because there is more than 1 person willing to go there. About the deaths, people want to go to the same place that someone went to only to unnintentionaly die, and then these people also die for similar reasons, because a big amount of humans are morons.

Now enjoy the ride, it will be your last! ^_^

Kazeto Elementalist from somewhere in Europe. Since: Feb, 2011 Relationship Status: Coming soon to theaters
Elementalist
#4: Jan 22nd 2015 at 4:25:02 PM

Hmm ... I say it depends on how you present it. When you have a string of events that usually would depend on chance and could be seen as coincidental, what you want is to present each of those events—maybe each but one if you have the characters hang a sufficiently-colourful lampshade on how that one was a lucky event—as "likely".

Think about it, even if the whole thing depends on a chain of events, if every single one of those events is a "likely" one, then the whole chain gets labelled by "likely" and therefore also "plausible" by most of your readers (outside of those who know their maths and know that chains of improbable stuff can happen randomly just to mock those who think they know statistics but really don't).

So what you want to do, is to work on presenting every one of those events in a way that will make it easy to assume that there isn't anything unlikely in the event. Foreshadow, provide background information, have the characters discuss the whole thing, do what you can, to make it seem like there isn't anything wrong.

The one about finding supplies on a corpse, for example. Provide some basic info about how many people went into the place earlier, quite a significant amount of them actually prepared for it being expeditions, and dying for whatever other reason. Have the characters or the narrator remark that the possibility of finding supplies on corpses is pretty high—not necessarily objectively high but even just subjectively high, you know, higher than average; most readers either won't see the difference or will already be aware of it all and have no problem with it—unless the corpses themselves had been stripped of supplies by looters already, and when writing the scene where the character finds supplies on a corpse, make it a point to state that luckily, the corpse had not been rid of supplies yet.

In fact, the only one that might be hard to work around that is the one with the shouting, because that's by default a time-sensitive event and those, when encountered by random chance, are by default always labelled as "unlikely" unless you play it really well. But it can be done, and as I had said (well, written) earlier, for as long as you give the characters that lampshade to hang on it, one "unlikely" event in a chain of "likely" ones still gives you a "likely" chain of events ... well, from the readers' perspective. Those who know statistics will know that even an event chain composed entirely of "likely" events is most likely an "unlikely" chain too, even if it is the most likely of them all, but people who know statistics probably aren't going to complain about it anyway.

Wolf1066 Crazy Kiwi from New Zealand (Veteran) Relationship Status: Dancing with myself
Crazy Kiwi
#5: Jan 22nd 2015 at 11:10:13 PM

Thanks for the comments.

I'm going to be trying in every way possible to make the events seem likely - within the conceits and constraints of the 'verse it's set in.

I'll be aiming to make it clear that there's the distinct possibility that there are others around who didn't find their way to that river at that time and, because they don't encounter this particular group, their tale is not being told - which is standard in story-telling anyway: stories and movies with multiple story threads that "coincidentally" come together later in the story are not "coincidental", they're "selective reporting"... We don't get shown the story arcs of those hundreds/thousands/millions who don't wind up at the Final Showdown.

Conservation of Detail - the author is not going to devote space and time to the shmuck who wanders off in a different direction and misses out on being part of the action.

I'll also be having the characters lampshading their "luck" and discussing the likelihood of all winding up together (and probably having someone invoke the above by saying "well, if you'd turned south instead of north, you wouldn't be having this conversation now") and the "luck" is going to be darkly lampshaded again when they find the first corpse - to the tune of "Christ, that could've been how I ended up if I hadn't met you guys..."

On the whole, I'll be doing everything I can to make their encounters seem likely based on the decisions they make and the actions they take.

It's also just the introducing of the characters at the beginning of the adventure, I suppose, not a "and there they were, about to be killed because they didn't have a Plasma Gun and then suddenly a Federation Soldier wandered around the corner, unlimbered his Plasma Gun and cut down the baddies..." sort of "coincidental meeting".

[up]Thanks for the comment on the shouting. I suppose there's going to be a limit on how long she's going to continue trying to call for help before giving up. I've already mentioned that she stopped yelling when her throat got hoarse and took to whistling every now and then instead - so it's going to be a matter of how long she would do that before thinking "fuck it, there's no one around, what's the point?" and "coincidentally" the others happen to come within earshot inside that time span.

They only need to hear one whistle - then they can reply and give her the incentive to continue until they find her.

I could probably increase the likelihood by having her decide that she's going to try every hour and she was heading downhill anyway - so she would've found that very same river sooner or later.

[up][up][up]As to the distances, they're on foot so they're not really terribly far apart - within only an hour or two's walk from one another.

shiro_okami Since: Apr, 2010
#6: Jan 23rd 2015 at 2:38:26 PM

There are no coincidences, only hitzusen.

Sorry, couldn't resist. tongue

edited 23rd Jan '15 2:38:38 PM by shiro_okami

Tungsten74 Since: Oct, 2013
#7: Jan 25th 2015 at 5:43:19 AM

As to the distances, they're on foot so they're not really terribly far apart - within only an hour or two's walk from one another.

I can cover three miles, the distance from my house to the centre of my home city, in about an hour. The odds of me randomly bumping into someone if we were that far apart are miniscule.

That said - don't worry about it. If you need the characters to find each other for your story to work... then have them find each other. Seriously. Most readers won't care about how unlikely such a scenario would be, because for most of them, that's just how stories work. Million to one chances crop up nine times out of ten. Embrace that fact. Stories are all smoke and mirrors anyway, they don't have to make perfect logical sense.

Another thing: if you do this at the start of your story, your readers will care even less. The reason readers hate happy coincidences at other times is because they usually resolve conflicts that they were interested and invested in, in really stupid and boring ways. But if you do it at the start, the audience will just accept it as part of the story's central conceit, in the same way they would if you introduced dragons or laser-swords. It's not resolving a conflict - it's laying the foundations for conflict later in the story.

edited 25th Jan '15 7:01:23 AM by Tungsten74

Madrugada Since: Jan, 2001
#8: Jan 25th 2015 at 8:45:48 AM

Life is full of coincidences, and even more full of things that look like coincidences if you ignore everything else that is happening at the same time. And that's what storytelling is — deciding what all else to ignore. The coincidences you've listed wouldn't bother me at all.

ArtisticPlatypus Resident pretentious dickwad from the bottom of my heart. Since: Jul, 2010
Resident pretentious dickwad
#9: Jan 25th 2015 at 8:51:48 AM

Is there anything particular about these characters? Are they the established main cast from an earlier story, do they all know each other or are they all secretly were-hamsters? If they are, then yes, them randomly bumping into each other like that would wreck my suspension of disbelief.

If they aren't, it's just a matter of several people being in the same general area.

This implies, quite correctly, that my mind is dark and damp and full of tiny translucent fish.
Wolf1066 Crazy Kiwi from New Zealand (Veteran) Relationship Status: Dancing with myself
Crazy Kiwi
#10: Jan 25th 2015 at 10:59:59 AM

Thanks a lot. That makes me feel all the more at ease.

Million to one chances crop up nine times out of ten.
Now have visions of Sgt Fred Colon, with his bow and lucky arrow, standing on one leg...

It's not resolving a conflict - it's laying the foundations for conflict later in the story
Or, in the case of one of those characters, conflict right from the minute he meets the rest.

[up][up]Cheers for that, Maddy.

[up]Nah, they're just random people meeting for the first time and the werehamster doesn't turn up until half way through the third act.

AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#11: Jan 25th 2015 at 7:43:17 PM

It takes a lot of coincidence to break a story for me. The only case I can think of where coincidence broke a story for me was the opening episode of Code Geass, where the girl who grants magic powers just happened to run into a guy who was not only a strategic genius, but was also the son of the king and who has a one-time best friend in opposing army. Any one of those things I might have been able to take, but altogether they broke the story for me.

Reading your outline, it doesn't sound like you have that sort of industrial scale coincidence going on.

imadinosaur Since: Oct, 2011
#12: Jan 27th 2015 at 4:51:21 AM

I can't remember where I read this (some blog somewhere, probably), but one piece of writing advice that's stuck with me with regards to coincidences: readers won't mind coincidences that are near the beginning of the story (setting up the premise), or ones that make things harder for your protagonists; they will mind ones near the end of the story (it's not playing fair) or that make things easier for the protagonists.

Are you familiar with Avatar: The Last Airbender? In the very first episode, Katara (the last waterbender in the Southern Water Tribe) and her brother Sokka happen to stumble across the iceburg in which the titular Avatar, Aang, is floating, and they do so at the exact time that the banished Fire Prince Zuko (a villain) is in the vicinity, searching for the Avatar. That's two quite unlikely coincidences, but they serve to set up the rest of the story so nobody in the audience notices (and if they do notice, they don't mind).

In the final episodes, however, Aang, the Avatar, has spent considerable time worrying about the morality of killing the genocidal Fire Lord. All his friends and even his own past lives are telling him that it's necessary. He still can't do it; luckily, a island-sized Lion-turtle (which hadn't even been hinted to exist, except in a few blink-and-you'll-miss-it background details) kidnaps him in the night and shows him another way. He goes into battle against the Fire Lord, refuses to kill him, and then uses a technique that had never been seen before to remove the Fire Lord's fire powers, and solves the problem without compromising his morality. Because this was a coincidence right at the end of the story, and it solved the protagonist's problem at a stroke, a lot of viewers called this bullshit and accused the writers of pulling it out of their asses at the last moment.

So. I think you're fine; coincidences used to set up a story won't even register as coincidences to your readers.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Wolf1066 Crazy Kiwi from New Zealand (Veteran) Relationship Status: Dancing with myself
Crazy Kiwi
#13: Jan 27th 2015 at 11:47:29 PM

Sounds like consensus is that it's workable.

I'm going to have the characters discussing their situation and, naturally, commenting on the sequence of events that brings them together. Which means they can lampshade the situation, attribute it to "Divine Providence" if they desire and even rationalise how they came to meet up.

I'm also planning on as much foreshadowing as possible so that the skills/equipment they bring to the group and the sequence of events don't seem too implausible.

Such "treasure" as they find on a previous "unfortunate" is largely unhelpful for their immediate situation - such as books, paper, pens etc, some stuff that's no use at the time but is moderately of use later (but not for resolving plot conflicts or dangers). The most useful items at the time they find it are the pack itself and a thermos flask with a plastic mug (and even then, those things just make life marginally better for one of them).

For everything else, they have to make do with what they've got between them and improvise like mad, use their skills or just plain "do without" - they'll have to have agency and make their own decisions regarding their survival and future, earn any victories.

Thanks, everyone, for all the helpful feedback and advice.

JumbledDesert Cyber Judas from Anime Lamd Since: Aug, 2017 Relationship Status: You can be my wingman any time
Cyber Judas
#14: Apr 7th 2019 at 7:18:29 PM

Many coincidences happen in real life, such as the author of Webcomic/Soinchu (damn his hide) winning a sweepstakes produced by Di C for Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. I suggest you keep them in and reference that Reality Is Unrealistic.

Morphenomenal!
BrightLight from the Southern Water Tribe. Since: May, 2014 Relationship Status: 700 wives and 300 concubines
#15: Apr 10th 2019 at 7:40:34 PM

I'll chip in my two cents.

As long as what you think might be a coincidence doesn't come off as an Ass Pull or a Deus ex Machina to easily solve the good guys' problems, then it's not a bad thing at all.

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