Luck And Coincidence

So, just how much luck can a story take?

Lucky Fish

Perhaps because of the events of last week’s baseball game (see “Retro Isotopes,” 7-27-11), I’ve been thinking a lot about luck – especially as luck is related to stories.

We all accept a certain amount of luck – or luck’s close cousin “coincidence” – in our daily lives. Indeed, I think we enjoy sharing stories of when our luck worked out – especially for the good, but even when the outcome was bad. Perhaps we like these tales because luck (or coincidence) seems to hint at a larger pattern of purpose in a universe that has come to seem increasingly purposeless.

Ah… But I become too philosophical.

In the not so distant past, an author could get away with using coincidence to move along the plot. The protagonist might overhear a conversation which warned him or her of a sinister plot or revealed that someone whom he (or she) had thought was a friend was actually not as favorably disposed as the protagonist had believed.

Sometimes, this overheard information might prove to be flawed. Especially in romance novels, the heroine frequently seems to be in a position to see her beloved embracing a beautiful woman before glancing up and down the street and slipping into a nearby house. Of course, later you learn this woman was his sister or cousin or whatever, but the plot has been jiggered along with a new complication.

There’s a lovely bit in C.S. Lewis’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader where, via the agency of a magical book, Lucy overhears a girl she thought was her friend saying unkind things about her to another girl. Lucy is – quite understandably – shocked and hurt. Later, however, she learns that the friend had only spoken as she had because she feared the other girl. This scene provides not only a nice reminder about the dangers of eavesdropping, but also a hint that events are often more complex than we imagine.

As time progressed and writing overall became more sophisticated, situations such as the villain neatly outlining his entire plan to conquer the world when the protagonist is in position to hear the details and so foil the villain’s nefarious schemes became regarded as so contrived and unlikely as to become a matter of humor.

Towards the end of Roger Zelazny’s Prince of Chaos, Merlin (not the Merlin of Arthurian legend, just someone with the same name), waits in a room off a long corridor to avoid an approaching group of people. Merlin thinks, “In a badly plotted story they’d have paused outside the doorway, and I would have overheard a conversation telling me everything I needed to know about anything.” They don’t, of course. In fact, what Merlin overhears is so banal as to be less than useless.

I recently read – and enjoyed – Jacqueline Winspear’s post-WWI historical novel Maisie Dobbs. However, there was a sequence early in the novel that nearly kept me from reading further. Maisie has newly set herself up in business as a private investigator. In a tremendous bit of luck, she meets up with a war veteran who had his life and his leg saved by the surgeon Maisie was assisting. (She’d been a nurse during the war.)

Not only does Billy remember Maisie, but he is also so intensely grateful that he offers to assist with little jobs about her office. Moreover, he turns out to have the exact combination of skills and traits necessary to help Maisie solve her first important solo case. Had the book not been recommended by someone whose taste I trust, as soon as I saw how large a role coincidence was going to play, I might not have finished reading.

And yet… Would I have been right to do so?

Is the ruling out of coincidence as an element in a story’s plot entirely fair? Plans do get overheard – especially if the protagonist is already suspicious and therefore searching for opportunities to learn more. I believe that there is documentation that even more unlikely occurrences – such as a pocket Bible or lucky silver coin stopping a bullet – have happened.

So how much luck or coincidence can you accept in a story before you begin to feel cheated? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts and feelings on this tricky aspect of the storyteller’s art.

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