Blog-Coincidence 02
I attended a writer's meeting in the first weekend of September 2014 with my critiquing buddy, Grace.
She mentioned she was going to enter a prestigious short-story contest, the Sunday Star Times Award. I replied that a few years back, a former children's writer friend, Tanya, had at a relatively young age been a finalist for the award, and what a phenomenal writer she was.
Grace and I have been attending these adult writing events for most of 2014. So, it felt like a total coincidence when I turned around to see Tanya standing a few feet behind us. Never at these events had I mentioned Tanya and had not known she was now a member of this writers' group. Coincidence.
Coincidence feels like it has plucked us out for something unexpected. Special even.
Has something like this happened to you?
However, when it comes to fiction, it takes a very skilled writer to make coincidence appear as magical as it does in real life. Have you read about an incidence of coincidence in fiction that didn't feel like the author had done it to make life easy for him/ her? Unfortunately for me, coincidence in fiction makes the novel seem amateurish.
There are exceptions of including coincidence in fiction so it makes the reader go, "Aah," with happiness, although they might not be strictly called, 'coincidence.' I will write about them in another post.