awful symmetry

[incandescens]

So, my parents were watching Casualty, UK tv series set in the very busy Casualty department of an imaginary hospital notable for being near a port, the sea, a coalmine, an airport, and basically anything at all that could spark an interesting accident. (Or, to be more precise, I suspect my mother was watching and my father happened to be in the room.)

It was one of those episodes, apparently, where the moral is pointed exorbitantly by various different accidents which display the point of the story, and where one can practically see the quote marks glowing around the AUTHOR'S MESSAGE. On the other hand, it was the first episode (of the seventeenth season, God help us) and presumably needed a good high quota of blood and drama. However, the way all the accidents were related, or the plot points were made, was apparently so evident that the characters themselves made some remarks about it.

So . . . on a slight tangent here . . . how much coincidence is one reasonably allowed in a story? In rpgs, one has to almost bend over backwards to avoid too much of it, to prevent players screaming, "Railroad!" and for one's own sense of artistic flair. In books, too much coincidence negates plot and devalues characters.

But on the other hand, real life does have coincidence. Real life can have really stupid coincidences. Real life can throw tons of stupid coincidences at you, and be utterly ridiculous in a way that would be criticised as implausible or overdone in any decent fiction.

Of cousre, I'm currently working on something which runneth over with unfortunate coincidences, but then it's meant to be farce. Hm.

---

A monk of immense learning and acute intellect, he had made himself happy in a little stone hut and a little stony garden in the Balkans, chiefly by writing the most crushing refutations and exposures of certain heresies, the last professors of which had been burnt (generally by each other) precisely 1,119 years previously. They were really very plausible and thoughtful heresies, and it was really a creditable or even glorious circumstance that the old monk had been intellectual enough to detect their fallacy; the only misfortune was that nobody in the modern world was intellectual enough even to understand their argument.
(_The Ball And The Cross_, GK Chesterton)

Comments

[drivingblind.livejournal.com]

Coincidences are fine, so long as they increase the enjoyment of the story rather than detract from the story by standing out. Bujold said she struck early on the principle of 'what's the worst possible thing that I could do to this character?' over and over. Doing the worst possible thing usually involves the creation of coincidence.

To be honest, there was a point or two in the whole Cordelia's Honor duo where I felt the coincidence got damned close to that distraction point -- but that, in the face of the mountain of other coincidences which were just good progressions of story and pain, was a pretty minor blip.