Writing Tricks: Coincidences – Do’s And Don’ts

Something new for your writing bag of tricks is coincidences (which is joincidences with a C for all you Friends fans).

While some writing advice will tell you to steer clear of using them too much or even altogether, they can be a powerful tool when done correctly. And that is where these do’s and don’ts will help you!

Writing Tricks: Coincidences – Do’s And Don’tsDon’t Use Them For Convenience

If you want to avoid your readers rolling their eyes, which I think most of us do, you’ll want to give the convenient coincidence a miss.

A convenient coincidence occurs when your MC runs into the very person they need at the right moment, or the file they need to keep their job hitting their desk seconds before the big meeting. While crossing paths with the right person, or getting the right file can happen in your story, if they happen way too easily via a convenient coincidence rather than your MC working hard to make those things a reality, you’re robbing the reader of a more interesting story.

Do Foreshadow

Is it a coincidence that your girl-scout-in-her-youth MC has been left for dead in the woods but has all the tools to survive? Sure. But you can take that coincidence and make it work by foreshadowing her history of skills before she’s left to fight for her life. When it doesn’t work is only announcing those handy skills when the MC literally uses them.

If the audience knows ahead of time that your hero has survival skills, it’s going to come across as something falling into place. That’s a better option than your reader refusing to finish the book because it became unbelievable when the woods-stranded MC knew exactly how to combine the bark of one tree with the crushed flowers of another to make a paste to starve off infection when nothing in her prior actions or backstory pointed to such knowledge.

Foreshadowing the right info earlier eliminates the kind of coincidence that will put your reader in an annoyed state of disbelief, so make the most of it.

Don’t Forget To Inject Credibility

For certain elements of your story, the MC needs to earn what they’re finding/solving/learning, and the wrong coincidences can ruin that.

Let’s say, for example, that your MC learns a vital clue via an overheard conversation where they are in the right place at the right time. Such coincidences happen, but isn’t it more credible that they find out that info through their own hard work? Don’t you think the reader would enjoy a better-earned reveal than the right info being overheard?

An even worse coincidence cliche is blind luck getting your characters in and out of every situation. Instead, inject credibility and come up with earned, layered solutions to reveal the right things rather than relying on unearned, easy coincidences.

Do Get Rid Of The Random Know-It-All

If you’re relying on the answer to the MC’s conundrum being solved by a person who enters the story via a well-placed coincidence, please don’t.

An expert in a certain field that the MC had to track down and risk their life to get to giving them the right info—yes! An MC broken down on the highway and picked up by a random trucker who dabbles in learning every topic known to man while hauling freight knows the right info—no! It’s too coincidental, too know-it-all, and not good enough.

Don’t Have Bumbling Bad Guys

Nobody can root for an MC who triumphs because bumbling bad guys make a stupid mistake, or ruin their own plans with a coincidence that doesn’t work in their favor. It isn’t a real win.

In fact, if you look at your climax and the bad guys get defeated with no real input from the MC, not only are your bad guys the worst, but the MC having no real impact on the outcome of the story is a letdown for the reader too.

The protagonist needs to defeat the antagonist—and if bumbling bad guys are creating coincidences to do the heavy lifting instead; reassess.

Do Steer Clear Of Nicks Of Time

Did the MC arrive in the nick of time to prevent the colossal explosion, even though getting from one side of the city to the other should have taken 5 hours? It’s okay, a helicopter flown by an old friend of the MC’s father who was never mentioned until the sound of helicopter blades cut through the beeping horns of the grid-locked traffic arrived—in the nick of time—to pick our hero up and get her where she needed to be!

There are better ways to use coincidences, tension, and to stop the colossal explosion, so try them first and steer clear or scale back your nick of time coincidences.

Don’t Shy Away From Plausibility

Some coincidences you need, such as the new co-worker of your MC being an old crush.

Now that they’re working together, there’s a reason for them to cross paths and reconnect. If you instead have your MC bump into their old crush at random on the street, it lacks plausibility.

While that scenario works, and is the start of multiple rom-coms, having the MC and crush reconnect at work gives more to the story. Now they can get to know each other again during shifts until the romance blooms. It’s an investment in character relationships and makes more sense for them to be in each other’s lives again instead of just a random coincidence bringing them together. By playing into the plausibility of the good coincidence of their shared history instead, you give yourself another coincidence option to mine.

Combined with the rest of the do’s and don’ts listed here, you should be able to make the most of any coincidence in your writing and add another trick to your wordsmithing arsenal.

— K.M. Allan

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