A character in a novel makes a chance discovery, hidden away in the attic: an old journal, a trove of letters, a note never sent. What’s inside? Usually the answers to a lot of questions hovering in the back of the reader’s mind–even questions perplexing the character to the point of distraction. But now, the view is clear. New knowledge clarifies the character’s mission and can even set up the entire future course of the plot.
That’s powerful. So powerful in fact, that you’d better not use it more than once or twice in an entire novel. Letters, journals, old newspaper stories, Senior Class prophesies, overheard conversations, characters meeting through total coincidence, these are all examples of useful literary devices, powerful enough to jump you several squares ahead in a single go. But use any one of them just one time too many, and suddenly the reader is painfully aware that there is writer behind it all–and that the writer walks with a crutch, the crutch being overdependence on obvious devices.
When are writers most susceptible to these devices…?
At moments crying out for a breakthrough. Structurally these are points along the plot line where the energy of a give “beat” is exhausted. Having tried everything, the main character seems stuck in a dilemma with no exit possible.
Example: there is a moment in the movie Cast Away when Tom Hanks, having struggled for several years to stay alive on a desert island, makes a desperate attempt to escape to open sea on a makeshift raft. Everything possible goes wrong. As one by one his options are reduced from slim to none, we see out of ideas, out of life force, powerless, and headed for certain death. Accepting it, he lies down on the raft to drift to his certain death.
[Notice, by the way, that Hanks' character problem at the start was a mania for control. Now he's gone all the way to the other end of the control spectrum...to passive acceptance of whatever fate he's about to be dealt. This is good classic story telling: a man with everything...reduced to nothing. Now what?]
What happens next is one of the most powerful uses of coincidence I’ve seen in a movie story: There’s a sudden gigantic noise–unidentifiable–and the screen blackens with…what? After a moment, we see that Hanks’ raft has just missed being clipped by a huge passing freighter. He’s noticed, he’s saved, a new story beat opens. The entire course of the plot has been spun 180 degrees by a coincidence of epic proportions.
And you can bet the experienced writer won’t dare use another one!
Be warned.
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