One complaint I often hear about plots is that coincidences come too frequently, or they’re unbelievable. Coincidences in fiction makes readers mad, even though they might have actually happened.
My example: Way back in 1982, my former wife and I were dining with another couple at The Shed, a steakhouse in Dallas. It was the new In eatery that everyone had to experience. Of course since it was new, the place was packed that particular night and we had to wait nearly an hour to be seated in one of the smaller dining areas off the main room. It didn’t matter, I liked the smaller area that wasn’t as noisy.
Even though my friend was a cop, I was sitting with my back against the wall with a view of the door and a dozen tables. A foursome composed of two distinct generations came in, an older couple and a pair of young folks who looked to be around eighteen or nineteen.
The young lady in a cream-colored sweater and her escort sat facing us, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the dark-haired woman. It became so awkward on my part, that I had to purposefully engage those around me so I wouldn’t stare, something that had never happened to me before.
Halfway through the meal, the young woman and her beau had a disagreement that caught my attention. The older man with them patted the air to quiet the young couple down, and the girl rose and walked out. She returned a few minutes later and all was well. The foursome finished the meal in quiet conversation.
I confess, I kept sneaking glances at the dark-eyed young lady until we paid out and left. As we walked by their table, I took one last glance at her when she smiled at the older couple, and we were gone.
Thirty years later, the Bride and I were sitting by the pool one late evening, drinking wine and talking about our past before we met. Since she grew up in a small town about forty miles from where I did in Old East Dallas, the conversation drifted to the Dallas clubs that used to line Greenville Avenue, a hotspot for the Baby Boomers such as us. In fact, I was born on this date way back in 1954, one of the earlier Boomers, and she came long ten years later almost to the day, as the last of our generation, and will celebrate her birthday on the 29th.
WIth this almost exact ten-year difference in our ages, (and by the way, our 26th anniversary is on her birthday, only three days from now) but we’ve found we share similar memories of that time in the ‘80s before we met.
The music playing through our outside speakers helped recall those days and one song reminded me of a place I enjoyed. “Hey, do you remember Spaghetti Warehouse out on I-35?”
Her white teeth flashed in the fading light. “My high school boyfriend took me there before we went dancing at Bell Star.”
“You had to be twenty-one to get into Bell Star.”
She gave me a look over the top of her glass. “I’ve heard.”
“Man, there were some great clubs and restaurants down there back then. The Longhorn Ballroom, Whiskey River, The Western Place. I loved The Old San Fransciso Streakhouse –––.”
“With the girl on the swing over the bar!” Her eyes lit up at the recollection.
“Yep, but my favorite was Baby Doe’s Matchless Mine.” The Dallas restaurant on the only hill in Dallas (and that’s a stretch to say) had a great view of the Trinity River down below, and about a million cars stuck in traffic jams off of I-35.
“I liked it, too. Especially the cheese soup.”
“That reminds me, did you ever eat at The Shed? It was a steak house in North Dallas.”
“I loved that place. My parents used to take me there–––.”
My head spun and my breath caught. I was back in That Place, staring across the restaurant at my future wife. “You were there with them and someone else once. You were wearing a cream sailor’s sweater.”
Her expression was one of shock. “I did wear that sweater when they took me and my boyfriend out to eat one time. We broke up a year later, but how did you know? ”She tilted her head and took another sip. “I’ve never told you that story.”
“Didn’t have to.” I described the scene as she nodded and listened with a frown across her forehead. “I was there and couldn’t take my eyes off of you from across the room. Y’all had a disagreement and you got up and left.”
“We sure did. He was back from college and I’d just graduated. It was the beginning of the end for us.”
For the next hour we talked about that night, how I was taken with her almost to the point of embarrassment, though I have to admit, she hadn’t noticed me at all. We talked of our lives with other people for the next eight years until a mutual friend introduced us in Austin and we married another eight years later.
It was an unbelievable coincidence, and when I used it in a manuscript, my agent urged me to take it out. “I love the story It’s too unbelievable in a book.”
“But it really happened.”
“You readers won’t like it, or believe it’s possible.”
I found out she was right once again as I went down a rabbit hole of research concerning reality and fiction. In real life, coincides are seriously cool, but in the worlds we create, the same rules simply don’t apply. Constant or poor coincidences are startling to readers, and their ability to suspend disbelief (though we always do that in fiction) can draw them out of the plot and drive ’em to complain in two-star reviews. Readers hate sudden, lazy coincides.
However, on the flip side, that interesting confluence of people and events works at the beginning of a novel because technically, all stories start with a coincidence as….
…two men just happen to be fishing under a bridge one night when the body of a woman drops into the water and the story takes off. (John D. MacDonald in Darker Than Amber). It worked so well that particular Travis McGee novel eventually wound up on the big screen, and I know, because I saw some of it at a drive-in theater one night in 1970…never mind.
But if such a thing happens at the end of your novel, when the antagonist is about to shoot the protagonist under that same bridge and another body falls on his gun hand and saving our hero’s life, then you’ll hear about it. I guarantee.
These Rules That Aren’t tend to apply more to thrillers and mysteries. If you’re writing fantasy, horror, or romance, then you can get away with it, because it seems that readers of these genres are more open to fate and such similar interactions.
Come to think of it, maybe I can go back and dust off that old manuscript and dabble in romance for a while. Anyway, careful what you create in the way of falling bodies or chance meetings, and let reality and past memories rest for quiet discussion some night over wine.
I’m hoping this post will initiate some feedback/discussion, because this writer wants to know.
Instead of my usual craft post, I’d like to open up a discussion. Here’s the question: How do smartphones impact the way we write thrillers?
