Coincidence and Empowerment

So you hear a lot about how coincidence is bad in a book because it makes the plot weak, it shows the writer behind the scenes, and it is just unbelievable and throws the reader out of the world of the book. Yeah, it may be all that. But I think the real reason coincidence is a problem is because of the way that it steals power from the protagonist.

You want to build a protagonist who is active. You don’t have to have a perfect protagonist. You don’t even have to have a sympathetic protagonist. You can have a weak protagonist who doesn’t really know anything important. But what you can’t have is one who does nothing interesting or that moves him/her toward his/her goals (however stupid they may be in the beginning of the book).

When you as a writer give your protagonist the answer to a problem by having someone else solve it, or by simply having it drop from the sky, you are missing the chance to show your protagonist working hard and learning skills and cred by trying and failing multiple times.

Sometimes I think that writers are so worried about getting in enough plot that they overstuff their books with so much plot that they end up having to use coincidences to get through it. You need less plot than you think you need. You need more character. Plot isn’t the cool stuff that happens that makes the reader think that you, the writer, are cool. Plot is the character doing stuff to get what s/he wants. That’s it.

Go forth and plot!