No Coincidence in Fiction
I bought the very last inflatable pool at Walmart.
The end of July isn’t the time to shop for summer gear in South Carolina. Kind of like December 20th is far too late to expect stores to still have Christmas trees available.
But somehow, inexplicably, I walked into the store’s gardening section and found a boxed-up pool sitting by the outdoor furniture, all alone, not at all in its proper place. After placing it in my cart, I walked over to the summer fun aisle to see what other options there might be—just in case this summer’s shopping season hadn’t operated as usual and there were still options to be looked at. Of course, the aisle was picked clean.
That’s how I left Walmart with the very last inflatable pool. What a happy coincidence!
Except, I don’t believe in coincidences, and neither do you.
You might be thinking, “Wait a minute, you can’t assume I don’t believe in coincidences! Chance happenings are part of life. This world has scores of examples of weird fate. Everything is chance if you look at it closely.”
Hold your hats, folks. Let me ask you something else. If you picked up a book by your favorite author, would you find it jarring and unsatisfying if in chapter 20 of the novel the plot went something like this: the hero finds his lost amulet in the heat of battle just before the villain takes his head off with a huge axe and the amulet defends against metal so the axe glances off, allowing the hero to survive the blow and vanquishes the villain with an attack of his own… Would you feel unsatisfied if the explanation for why the amulet was lying just within reach was “it happened to work out that way”?
Of course you would. Readers want a sequence of events to follow one upon another, progressing in a satisfying, logical manner. A skilled author would present the problem of the lost amulet early in the story, hint at its significance to the hero, and provide clues and false trails to finding it throughout the plot. After the hero discovers the amulet during the final showdown, a new bit of information should come to light.
For example, the amulet was stolen by (so and so) and because the hero saved their life during the battle, they had a change of heart and were about to bring the amulet back when they were struck down. That’s not coincidence, its destiny, and its much more satisfying to read about. Closed circles make our hearts happy as readers. An author worth their salt knows this. We authors enjoy creating masterful, fulfilling arcs as much as our readers enjoy reading them.
Why is coincidence so jarring in literature when we take it as the norm in real life?
I think we’re pretty good at fictionalizing our reality when we don’t like the alternative, logical conclusion to our observation of what goes on in the world. If we observe the existence of destiny, or, as I like to call it, providence, we might have to take more responsibility for our actions, and for our responses to those things we label ‘happy coincidence’.
