WARNING: SPOILERS FOR GIRL ON THE TRAIN.
This week’s big question with my work-in-progress (WIP) is how to get the hero at the mercy of the villain (in other words, how to bring the two together at the end for the big confrontation) without that meeting being coincidental.
The problem with coincidence in fiction—and especially in thriller and toward the end—is several-fold.
We want our heroes to have agency. While coincidences at the beginning, before heroes learn how their world truly works, might be fine, coincidence after heroes begin to evolve, using that knowledge to get themselves out of that trouble, aren’t great. When events merely happen to heroes after they accept their journey, we tend to lose interest. Heroes are heroes (or protagonists, if an antihero) because they take charge of their destinies, even when they fail to change them. They seek out their happy endings, the answers to the questions, the problem that needs eliminating. They find the dragon hiding in the cave and they kill it there. A weak hero without agency is just a person waiting for the world to fall apart, and who wants to read hundreds of pages of that?
This also means that plotting well has a lot to do with consistency in character. If we have established a world in which a character is X, but the character suddenly does Y, without explanation, that is more than merely coincidence; it is chaotic.
It is the author’s job to show cause and effect. One of the cool parts about fiction is seeing how all the things we can’t have explained to us in real life—all the odd occurrences we take as dumb luck or fate—work, even if that explanation manifests as an oracle girl on a mountain who tells the hero what will happen to him. The author of a fictional world is a god, and the characters are playing to that god’s physics, trying to become as great and godlike. Thus, the author must make clear how cause-and-effect work in their fictional world, let the physics be known. When the events in the story become more powerful than the author, or when the hero fails to understand that world, readers begin to doubt the author and hero’s capabilities. As a result, readers don’t suspend disbelief; they are taken out of the story, seeing it as merely a story with plot devices and tactics, the hero merely a bumbling person without agency. It would be like seeing the puppeteer watching an instructional video on how to puppet as they work the strings, drawing the audience’s eye on that effort. The puppet becomes merely a wood doll with tangling strings, and the puppeteer appears not very skilled.
These coincidences then become plot holes, or plot devices, convenient creations for the sake of moving a story along or keeping it going for the requisite 300 pages, and that makes a pretty measly, lazy, semi-potent god, doesn’t it?
(If you’re interested in some plot holes and moments of convenience, check out this list of them in your favorite movies.)
I don’t want to appear incompetent—who would? And yet, with this WIP, I wrote myself in a corner, not setting up a place where the villain would be known to be at a certain time for the hero to find them. Worse, the hero thinks the villain is someone else entirely.
This mistake isn’t made in well-wrought thrillers, for example Girl on the Train. At the end of this masterful book, the anti-hero Rachel knows Tom is the killer, and she knows where he lives, because she once lived there as his wife herself. She also knows his current wife and child are likely in danger because she was, too, so she goes to the house, where, not coincidentally, he shows up BECAUSE he also knows Rachel is onto him and has been following her. He knows she knows and will go to his house. See? Not a coincidence. Masterfully crafted physics.
I struggle with this problem in every ending I write, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. It isn’t easy tying up all the loose ends in a purposeful manner, the hero’s plan sounding convincing, the truth spilling without sounding like an Austin Powers parody, the reader asking, Why do the killers always reveal everything right before they kill? Why not just kill the hero right away and not risk getting caught? (The answer to that last question, truthfully, is that killers often want credit for their acts. They are narcissists who need to be recognized by the one person who threatens their fragile egos the most.) BUT, how can a writer make this happen organically, without giving a huge info dump? Without it feeling melodramatic instead of showing a desperate, cornered villain wanting to be seen?
The trick, I think, is both shifting power dynamics often and setting up the answers early, giving some smaller doses along the way. That might mean going back and changing dates and times, planting details that will only make sense later, or placing a bug in a character’s ear, for example that the villain likes to get coffee at a certain shop at a certain time, and when the hero knows who that villain is, they go to that coffee shop. But that often means rewriting entire scenes, replotting huge chunks, because of ONE DETAIL.
Now you see why all the printing, outlining, revising, card-writing, app-using is necessary? It’s exhausting pretending to be a god.
I think developing character has a lot to do with strategically hinting at and eventually revealing motivations, desires, loathings... I'm beginning to see my own plot in this light, a bit of a psychological thriller (does mother revel in attention over daughter's troubles? etc.). Thanks as usz for a clarifying and inspiring read.