Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Coincidence
Coincidence is another natural enemy of believability. Each contrived
event in your story has the potential to have a negative impact on the
audience, raising questions in their minds and damaging (or even destroy-
ing) the fragile illusion that the tale is unfolding naturally vs. being con-
structed by the invisible hand of a writer. So, getting all the coincidences
out of one's story is a laudable goal.
It's also almost impossible.
Coincidences, despite everything bad about them—and there is
plenty—also have the potential to propel stories in new and unexpected
directions, generating surprises and opening new possibilities as to where
things might lead. And virtually every story has them, to one degree or an-
other.
Ironically, they often crop up due to the writer trying to solve other
problems. For example, in
chapter 4
we covered how important it is for
the stakes of the conflict be intensely personal to the Hero. So in action
stories, it's very common for someone in the Hero's family—or someone
else to whom he's emotionally attached—to be put in danger by the Vil-
lain. Sometimes setting up this kind of situation, however, can be a bit of a
stretch, and cause an ugly coincidence.
Consider the
Spider-Man
films. At the time of this writing, five theatrical
releases have hit the theaters—a trilogy from director Sam Raimi and a
two-movie reboot series with a different creative team. In
all five films,
,
Peter Parker's main love interest ends up being directly threatened by the
movie's super-villain. And each successive time audiences see this they
probably have a harder and harder time “buying” it. Not only does the
scenario become increasingly predictable, it can also be painful to watch
the plot contort itself in order to set it up.
Think about the Monomyth (
chapter 3
) again, and its common inclusion
of a Resurrection near the story's end—a surprising twist at the lowest
point of the story, when all seems lost. Because the Hero (or his goal)
needs to come back to life at the last second, sometimes a writer makes
the mistake of bringing in something out of left field to facilitate this turn-
