#4 Enter Deus Ex Machina; Exit Reader
Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed
Enter Deus Ex Machina; Exit Reader
Ben Elton was being steered away from committing the crime of ‘Deus Ex Machina’ by a master of plot-writing. ‘Deus Ex Machina,’ translated literally as “god out of a machine,” is an unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event which drops into the story from nowhere. Its sole purpose: to resolve a situation or untangle a plot. Is your hero bound and gagged next to a time-bomb? Have a passing rat chew through the rope! Or maybe he’s in a dimly-lit basement surrounded by very pissed off gun-toting enemy agents? Have his watch emit an ultra-high frequency sound wave that pops the room’s single light-bulb!
The reaction of your target audience? Groan. The suspension of disbelief collapses taking all your carefully crafted characters with it.
Although this plotting boo-boo bears a Latin moniker, it was the Greek dramatists, notoriously Euripides, who applied the ‘technique’ with such great frequency and gusto. At the time, it was quite acceptable - the ‘God on the Machine’ was the actor playing Zeus who was lowered onto the stage by crane at the critical moment. The first recorded criticism came from Aristotle no less who argued that good tragedy should be plausible. True enough. And that was 2000+ years ago. In today’s world, unless you’re writing a ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’-style romp, you simply cannot get away with such blatant coincidence.
So, how do you fix it?
It all comes down to considering what a plot actually is. If you see it as a chain of events that sweeps your main character along from beginning to end, there’s a strong chance you’re going to be employing gods on cranes. As we’ve already seen in this series of articles, plotting an effective story stems from the motive of your characters: what they want, the obstacles preventing them getting it and what they have to do to overcome them. Once we are engaged in the character’s struggle, be it internal or external, we will not tolerate something outside the frame of the story bursting in to do what the main character couldn’t. Aristotle was right - we demand the story to be plausible, but we also demand that it is meaningful, that our main character wins or fails on her own terms.
Another aspect of the blunder is the appearance made by the machine itself. We don’t want to ’see the plot’ or hear it creaking. Not only do most kidnapping destinations not come complete with gnawing rats, nor MI6 operatives carry watches that emit UHF sound-waves tuned to the exact frequency to shatter a light bulb, we really don’t want to see the author’s little tricks. They get in the way. They spoil the fun. Why? Because as a reader, you’ll feel duped. You lowered your guard and committed to the author’s story world. Then the author let you down. She betrayed your confidence. And there’s only one form of revenge: close the book. Forever.
To wrap up, there are no short cuts to story resolution, or at least there haven’t been since about 350 B.C. It might help to picture your story as a well-constructed building. A Deus Ex Machina would be equivalent to not bothering to put a roof on. Even if your readers don’t roll their eyes and lose confidence in your ability to constuct a complete edifice, they’ll notice the draught. Nobody hangs around in a draughty house for long.
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July 31st, 2007 at 10:04 am
[…] It can sometimes be hard to avoid Deus Ex Machina in your plotting, but it is always worth avoiding. To find out how read the next installment of ‘All-time Top 7 Plotting Mistakes and How to Avoid them at al Cost‘ which is now live at Scribble Resources. You are more than welcome to leave your comments. […]