| Author | Message | ||
     Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.25.3.116 |
Here's an interesting issue from another thread. We all know that real life is full of outrageous coincidences and implausibly motivated behaviours. But when we put these things in fiction, we're told they're unrealistic, that "folk don't act that way", that "those two characters would never just bump into each other like that in Zanzibar", etc. So, my question: why do many real events in life seem so unrealistic in fiction? I have two ideas about this, but would like to hear others' first. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.165.37.175 |
For something to be complained about as 'unrealistic' in fiction, one presumably is talking about only one genre of fiction: i.e. realistic fiction. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.131.61.19 |
William Goldman calls them 'movie moments' (of course) and cites the example of wondering what the weather will be like only to turn on the radio and the forecast just happens to be on. I think it's because people tend to rate the probability of coincidence as being far lower than it actually its, plus of course these are events over which we have no control - no matter how much we want to meet that girl again and wouldn't it be great to bump into her in Zanzibar, hoping for something like that seems so daft (and probably is) that the human mind can cope better by dismissing the slight chance of it happening altogether. In fact, if we were to entertain all the potential possibilities for what might happen when we walk out the door we'd never get outside because there would be too many to consider. So we just take the most likely occurrences and we tend to be right - which reinforces our belief that certain things will happen and certain things won't. I guess that probably amounts to a kind of operant conditioning. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.25.3.116 |
Good thoughts, John. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.165.37.175 |
Thinking about it, do people complain about unlikely coincidences in fiction? It's news to me. Personally, I feel all fiction is all about coincidences of event and emotion and character in counterpoint with each reader's view of settled reality. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.27.53 |
No, Des, I disagree. Wake Wood (which started Gary's train of thought, I think) is certainly not realistic - it's a supernatural horror film - but that's all the more reason why the behaviour of the characters needs to make psychological sense. I'm with Lovecraft: in a tale of the fantastic or supernatural everything except the fantastic element should be as convincingly realistic as possible. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.25.3.116 |
Yes, they do. And implausibly motivated behaviours which are based on real events. When I reviewed Gary Mc's Concrete Grove, I found a character's actions unrealistic, and of course he told me that it actually happened. This kind of thing happens all the time. Fiction has certain conventions which dictate content and rule out some actual events. I had a story rejected because one of my characters wore bells on the heels of his boots (which made him easily mistaken for a ghostly jester). I was told that was a contrivance and unconvincing. But I used to work at a theatre in which a guy wore bells on his boots. That kind of thing. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.25.3.116 |
(My response to Dessy boy's.) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.25.3.116 |
(Yes, the Wake Wood issue got me thinking about this issue, which I've been idly mulling over lately.) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.25.3.116 |
My two ideas, for what they're worth: 1) the pragmatic reason: coincidences and implausible behaviours are the exception rather than the rule; in other words, mostly in real life, people do behave in a manner we'd find convincing in fictional form. Anomalies (implausible behaviour/coincidence) surprise us in real life, but just look unrealistic in fiction, because often in a story, there's no bedrock of humdrum, predictable events against which to set them ("fiction is life without all the boring bits"). 2) the exotic reason: life is chaotic and in making sense of it, we story it in such a way that everything has a pattern and structure, with coherently motivated people (friends and associations, etc), and causes that lead to effects. Therefore, when we see a random event in fiction (implausible behaviour/coincidence), it makes us feel uncomfortable and reminds us of how tenuous our own grasp on everyday, chaotic existence is, and we prefer not to admit that it's that way and so seek to expunge it from the tale. The whole of life is fictionalised; it needs to make sense. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.59.77 |
Thinking about someone you haven't seen in decades and then (of course) bumping into him or her less than a minute later. It has happened to me a few times and it invariably started me musing about why that particular individual should have entered my thoughts at that particular moment in the first place. Nothing is unrelated. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.165.37.175 |
Well, I have always had a sense (spiritual, Fortean?) of 'the synchronised shards of random truth & fiction' - and this subject, I feel, is very complex. I don't think there is any one set of factors for the reader as general public, but a different set of factors for each individual reader. I don't think one can generalise from one book or even from one whole fiction genre. I am pretty sure there are books enhanced by strange, unreal characters and situations, and others not thus enhanced. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.59.77 |
Paths may have been interlocking all along but unbeknownst to us. Then, when the 'collision' becomes all too apparent, we think something marvelous has happened. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.30.74 |
I find I'm agreeing with everyone. On the other hand, my first published novel begins with a coincidence so contrived it still makes me blush, and only an aversion to rewriting published stuff has prevented me from reworking it. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.6.157 |
Another way of saying point 2) is that truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I actually think it might be far more basic, mechanical, than all of this. A coincidence is an example of an "exceptional event" in life - so much so, that we all will tend to remember it, note it, and tell others about it, however trivial. Strange characters too, they stand out as "exceptional." But stories - the single object (short-story, novelette, novel) that is a story - is an "exceptional event," related long. A marriage collapses, a hair-brained scheme to rob a bank, a demon erupting from under a mountain. So a coincidence or a bizarre character, they stand out as a second "exceptional event," and it's what I've come to term trumping the concept. The inclusion of a bizarre event or strange character will tend to appear and feel (mostly subconsciously) like a second grand coincidence, compared to the over-arching presence of the first: the very story itself. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
(this was linked from Coulter's site [sorry, Chris], and though at first blush might seem a tangent, it's actually quite relevant...) http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Aug11/ILRCreativityBias.html | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
And now this! A coincidence I ran across it - a news story about a surreal coincidence AND a bizarre individual! The headline says it all.... http://www.theblaze.com/stories/bizarre-after-man-arrested-for-streaking-police- find-wild-raccoon-in-his-car/ (this one from Beck's site Chris - again, apologies)  | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.58.56.2 |
In Olive Twist, out of everyone in London for him to try to rob, Oliver just happened to pick his own Grandad that he never knew he had. That's a bad coincidence. I've always hated that one. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.58.56.2 |
Obviously I meant Oliver Twist | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.25.3.116 |
Yes, that is a silly coincidence. Dickens was full of them. The emotional impact of many of his tales is seriously marred by such silly devices. But in the day, they were probably fresh. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.59.77 |
Silly coincidences were part and parcel of Victorian story-telling. We find it in numerous Machen stories, too. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.59.77 |
Ouch. We find them in numerous Machen tstories . . . | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.204.111.205 |
I suppose if fiction reflected absolutely EVERYTHING that happened in real-life, then coincidences would be accepted. But because it can't possibly do that, they seem contrived. Isn't there a literary technique (Chekov's Gun?) that can also seem contrived if used in a clumsy way? Although I can't seem to think of an example right now... | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.79.125 |
"If someone is to be shot later in the story or novel, show the gun in an early paragraph." (quoting from memory here) Is that what you mean, Steve? | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.236.243 |
Again, in the absence of Rhys: http://rhysaurus.blogspot.com/2011/09/arch-of-penguins.html | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
" I am led by them to conclude, paradoxically, that most of the finest cutting-edge writing was done long long ago. And I urge any fledgling writer out there to read such classics rather than small press contemporaries. You really will learn much more." That's very true. I've always felt that what 'slipstream' writers were bringing to the horror genre in the 1990s was a revival of the open approach that existed before the 1970s and did not die even then. There's very little in the way of cross-genre literary sensibility and open narrative structure in the contemporary horror small press that you can't find in the pre-war fiction of A.E. Coppard, Walter de la Mare, Henry James, Marjorie Bowen and others. That doesn't mean, of course, that current small press horror is without merit – but claims of its 'pioneer' status are generally erroneous. Most of the writers themselves know this, of course. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Also, not everything has to be cutting-edge, and there's plenty in the weird fiction genre that has tremendous merit while remaining at the core of what we expect the genre to deliver. The weird fiction genre's core metaphors have tremendous power and richness in a sufficiently gifted and diligent pair of hands. None the less, there's a streak of anti-innovation in horror fandom that limits what writers can do – as if 'the unknown' were only palatable if it is actually the known – and that hidebound thinking demands some rebellion from time to time. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.236.243 |
I think there has been some amazing new stuff in the Small Press in the last decade: eg from Ex Occidente Press. Elastic Press, Chomu Press, Ash Tree Press, Gray Friar Press, TTA Press... As good as or better than anything anywhere or anywhen else, in my view. I thnk those publishers have been flying with the literary as well as the weird schools... This may not be true of pure SF or Fantasy or Leisure-type Horror or commercial Twilights... | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.236.243 |
(I modestly excluded 'Nemonymous', in that first list). | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.236.243 |
(An associated article of mine from the past: http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/what-is-weird-literature-and-who- represents-it/) | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Only one statement to make when it comes to outrageous coincidences and unpredictable character behaviour, that challenges our sense of empathy as well as of "the expected", in fiction. Read Patricia Highsmith and marvel... | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.154.251.239 |
I shall go out on a limb: I have read much Rhys Hughes fiction since the early 1990s and, despite most of it, if not all, being brilliant stuff, I genuinely believe the SANGRIA IN THE SANGRAAL book to be the best organically thought-provoking and mind-expanding whole. Fabulous with brazen wit and sparkle: also implicitly gentle and meditative and self-traducing. Making clouds shine even if the world’s sun is hidden. My real-time review here: http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/sangria-in-the-sangraal/ | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.255.62 |
He's a class act. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 121.90.147.123 |
Certainly is. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.154.251.239 |
I visted Colchester Art Centre this morning – pushing my elderly mother on Mother’s Day – and I saw some original Constable clouds and a book about Constable’s clouds… (Rhys's book features clouds heavily)... :| As well as Carl Andre’s Firebricks on loan from the Tate (I saw them first many years ago when in the Tate). | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.140.96.186 |
My review has just started of Rhys' novel: http://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2013/11/12/the-young-dictator-rhys-hughes/ | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 94.4.217.89 |
A slightly less intellectual take on the coincidence issue is one that always jars with me, what I call the "Murder She Wrote Syndrome". The fact that a private detective always happens to be present at some sort of house party, train journey etc where a murder takes place. I know these stories are not meant to be taken too seriously but please... And further to the Dickens coincidences, Victorian literature is full of them, whole plots hang on the device. "The Woman in White" was spoiled for me by a dreaded, and massive, coincidence, and Charlotte Bronte, who I admire greatly as a writer, uses it in both "Jane Eyre" and "Villette". But then again, I was walking through London with its teeming millions, one night, newly moved here and a bit homesick and in need of some food, and there, glimpsed through the window of an Aberdeen Steakhouse, was family I knew from Suffolk. I went in to say hello and found that they hadn't yet ordered had a spare seat at the table and invited me to join them for a pleasant hour or so over a meal. A likely story, I hear you say... Cheers Terry | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I say again. Read Patricia Highsmith. Her character, coincidence and psychosis driven plots are so eerily convincing because they are so unlikely - just like "today's" headlines. She is the complete antithesis of your typical Hollywood screenwriter and that is only one of the many reasons why I love her so! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.145.220.166 |
Well Jessica Fletcher is actually the greatest serial killer in fiction. Even more than either Marple or Poirot she has managed to blame others for her killings. Poirot does take the award for sheer chutzpah with the orient express murder. 'It was everyone on the train except for me...' | ||
| David Lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 176.248.120.78 |
I'm going to start inviting detectives to all my parties, just to make everybody really uncomfortable. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
The same applies to superheroes—why do supervillains attack in cities controlled by them? Why don't they just go to Podunk, Kansas, and run roughshod there? Perhaps it's because there's a psychological need on the part of a supervillian, to match his superior strength/intelligence against an equal opponent—and vice-versa. For either, the other's his raison d'être. And so, back to Jessica Fletcher. Maybe her very presence agitates homicidal plots in those around her—she provokes them on some psychic level: she is like the triumphant knight, on his steed in the arena, calling all challengers forth; the murderer sub-consciously engages in a joust with the detective, when the detective's there waving his pendants…. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.30.198.208 |
I despair of reality's failure to provide plots, character arcs, origin stories, twists and satisfactory resolutions. Life just isn't sufficiently true to life. An Amazon reviewer would give it one star. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 185.26.180.51 |
I completely agree Joel. Life is shit on a pointy stick. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Btw: Poirot was the murderer, in one of Christie's mysteries, Weber. But I shall refrain from naming it, and therefore ruining it... (though I'm sure Stevie knows which one it is; I remember really digging it at the time, but I wonder if it holds up so well?) I go with Blake's assessment on life: "Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless shite." It went something like that…. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.145.221.230 |
I thought that was Jim Morrison | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I know Morrison took the name "The Doors" from Blake… are you making a reference/joke I'm missing?… | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.106.30 |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iERil2Tz1Mg You're not up to date on your doors lyrics are you? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Ha! No, apparently not! Great song, though…  Okay, Weber, now you name the Blake poem these lines come from (and no google-ing). | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.59 |
Life is a game, or a test, if you will, governed by what our limited capacity to experience and understand perceives as chance, and in which the decisions we make, both practical and moral, define our next move, or decision, given the new set of circumstances we are presented with. That's Steviology in a nutshell. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.59 |
The trick is in learning to anticipate the most likely circumstances to arise, both practical and moral, and to make our next move accordingly. That's called wisdom.. or being a good player of the game. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Amen, Stevie…. "We cannot write the order of the variable winds…. From day to day, the capital facts of human life are hidden from our eyes. Suddenly the mist rolls up, and reveals them, and we think how much good time is gone, that might have been saved, had any hint of these things been shown. A sudden rise in the road shows us the system of mountains, and all the summits, which have been just as near us all the year, but quite out of mind. But these alternations are not without their order, and we are parties to our various fortune.... When we break [universal] laws, we lose our hold on central reality. Like sick men in hospitals, we change only from bed to bed, from one folly to another; and it cannot signify much what becomes of such castaways,—wailing, stupid, comatose creatures,—lifted from bed to bed, from the nothing of life, to the nothing of death...." -- Emerson, "Illusions," The Conduct of Life | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.145.221.13 |
Is life just a game where we make up the rules while searching for something to say? Or are we just simply spiralling coils of the replicating DNA NAY NAY NAY - Monty Python | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.59.171 |
"Can't you see in your mind's eye We're all as one We're all the same And life is just a simple game." Moody Blues, A Simple Game "The best thing we can do is widen the mystery." Dutch author Harry Mulisch | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
"Life's a long song But the tune ends too soon for us all" -Ian Anderson (well, I'd just *have* to get a Tull lyric in there somewhere  ) | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
Or my particular favourite Tull lyric - which seems somehow appropriate to this thread: "Do you ever get the feeling that the story's too damn real and in the present tense? Or that everybody's on the stage, and it seems like you're the only person sitting in the audience?" -Ian Anderson, 'Skating Away (On the Thin Ice of a New Day)' | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
All our lives we love illusion Neatly caught between confusion And the need to know we are alive. -- The Residents, "Pain and Pleasure" | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Be a jerk, go to work Do your job, and do it right Life's a ball TV tonight Do you love it Do you hate it There it is The way you made it -Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention, "Brown Shoes Don't Make It". | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I see your Zappa, Stevie, and raise you... "So think about this little scene, apply it to your life. If your work isn't what you love, then something isn't right. Just look at Bob and Judy, they're as happy as can be. Inventing situations, putting them on TV." -- Talking Heads, "Found a Job" |