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Deus Ex Machina
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Hey Nathan, nudging this topic over to Author Chat, then I'll post my thoughts :)
Okay, in all honesty, I can't stand Deux Ex Machina, as both a writer and a reader. I avoid it like the plague. If reading it, I throw the book down.That aside, I've seen it anywhere, it doesn't seem to be more common in any specific type of book, thoughout publishing history.
To clarify definitions though, Deux Ex Machina more so pertains to when the plot twist is, it was god all along, or conversely, it was satan all along. As a reader, it feels like I was strung along only to meet the puppet master who's laughing in my face. It's similar to bait and switch, and in my opinion, it's spitting on the readers. So Toby's spider isn't really an ex machina, that's more like an inciting incident, if you want to be technical.
I once read this horror novel I took out of the library, long time ago and to this day I can't reember the title or the author's name. It was an interesting enough premise. Guy starts eating his own skin as a child then as he grows up, becomes a full on cannabal. Plot twist? Oh, satan made him do it all along. I don't remember the ending, because I completely lost interest at that point. I lost all empathy for the main character and saw him as a loser puppet.
In the history of publishing, very few authors have been able to get away with that kind of thing. I could probably count them on one hand.
Another thing that gets my goat is "it was all a dream." I've hated that cop out every since that old DALLAS TV show cliffhanger! The motivations and desires of my characters are what drive the plot, or else the entire exercise is overly contrived and bogus. If I want God or Satan to be the force behind my fiction, I'll start working on the next book of the New New Testament!
Lily wrote: "Okay, in all honesty, I can't stand Deux Ex Machina, as both a writer and a reader. I avoid it like the plague. If reading it, I throw the book down.That aside, I've seen it anywhere, it doesn't ..."
I mean in the sense that's been expanded to include more than just a godlike intervention. Anything that's highly coincidental, and moves the plot along for the hero without any real thought.
Ugh, it was all a dream, very annoying.Nathan, okay, fair enough. I would say it depends on the story and the genre.
Totally random example, Piers Anthony's Xanth series, YA fantasy. Everything is coincidental but also done on purpose as an entertaining pun. The skeleton key really is a skeleton. Things like that. So I would say as long as there's a story related reason for the coincidence to exist, it's fine, and if done well, the reader won't evn notice the coincidence.
Romeo and Juliet, another well-known example. It's all about coincidence. But it also has the overall theme of star-crossed lovers, so the coincidences are all for the purpose of showing the consequences of fate, in the context of star crossed lovers.
I hope that helps.
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I don't know...it's hard and tempting but I think it's better to have characters at least appear to solve their own problems. Like the right amount of prep or coincidence beforehand gives them the upper hand later on. That way it feels more like destiny or a twist of fate than the author bailing everyone out because a chopper filled with ninjas just landed on the baddies.
Lol, uncanny coincidence? OR lazy writing?This is a tough question. A grey area. Obviously, coincidences exist. The plausibility of the coincidence, I think, is what makes it acceptable to the reader or makes it a lazy cop-out.
I once threw a book in the trash b/c I was so disgusted by its literal employment of the term (i.e. it was all God's fault; God in Satan's clothing apparently).
I'm annoyed by it and I REALLY hope I'm not blindly doing it in my own writing :0)
Lily wrote: " ... In the history of publishing, very few authors have been able to get away with that kind of thing. I could probably count them on one hand. "Douglas Adams :D
I've yet to find a story I thought was well written at the onset that ended with a gratuitous ex machina. I have, though, read too many (especially when screening for publications) passably written that felt like the writer had run up against word count, time constraints or was flailing around for what kind of ending they assumed would best please the most people, rather than the true ending, and took the quick and sanitized ending — Swifferized a good story.
Mmm... The origin of deus ex machina is actually from Greek comedy; there though, it made at least some sense insofar as Greek tragedy had a fatalistic metamyth: the Greeks (in their orthodox identity, yet we know many individuals deviated from this) believed Humans had no power to change their fate, thus the necessity of divine intervention to bring about a resolution. At the heart of their discourse there was the idea that Humans could only give little headaches to Zeus, the guardian of Fate, which does imply that they have limited Free Will, but their will lacked wisdom, and always tried to bring Fate onto an incorrect course. The god was literally hoisted in through a crane, thus deus ex machina (deus ex polyspasto would be more precise).When a contemporary (or post-Medieval, actually, post Low-Medieval) author resorts to it, there is something amiss with his/her storytelling, unless they don't believe in Free Will. Oddly enough, Thomas Hardy readapted and inverted the deus ex machina to present a fatalistic but negative philosophy, so, when Tess's letter does not get delivered, that is a form of deus ex machina not to resolve, but to cause trouble (Fate is possibly Hardy's greatest character, I believe). Manzoni used Providence as deus ex machina in I Promessi Sposi.
Of course, in a world that thinks it has turned its back on allegory and certainly has on myth, di ex machinis are now characters (though characters are but allegories with a thick layer of realistic make-up in fiction, no matter how much we want to convince ourselves it is otherwise). That, however, presents a further problem: if the sudden appearance or re-invention of a character (Mr Brownlow in Oliver Twist, is a notorious example, but that remains Dickens's worst novel, structurally, despite its fame) other to solve a plot knot is a cheap way out, and usually lets readers down. A more contemporary example is About a Boy, a famous book that surpasses all expectations when it comes to useless features and in the end, if one reads it at a deep level, presents the exact opposite of what it purports to: a lower class with no willpower.
I suspect what Nathan meant was from an author's perspective, when the plot points start to seem too coincidental, and whether that would be accpetable. Things like deux ex machina.In my honest opinion, that's a phase. We all go through it, and it comes and goes. The constant worry that readers will see right through all of your tricks and you'll be left with the emperor's new clothes.
It takes practice, I find. A lot of practice and much more self-control to make the writing flow instead of just coincidence. But I also feel it's 100% dependent on the story.
By concidence, a tornado sweeps through Kansas and Dorothy finds herself in the land of Oz. And that's okay.
I know he meant from an author's perspective. Of course any author can do what s/he wants, but my point is that there's a moral question, not just a matter of craftsmanship involved. I would say that the more an author uses his/her craft meaningfully, the more s/he gets my respect. I'm a bit of a lottel scholar of tropes, when I was working in education, I had a class of students who used to play a game on class, they would randomly open Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory and pick a word at random to see if I knew it (they caught me out once in seven years...). The thing is that tropes have inherent dynamics; they are not just tools, and these dynamics entail different perspectives on the world itself. An author may think s/he's using, say simply, simile instead of metaphor, for 'embellishment', in which case the author is not very much in command of the craft, s/he's a 'decorative' writer. If s/he uses it to create an effect, that's a step deeper. If the effect is structural, then it's half a step deeper. If s/he uses it with an aesthetic rational, then it's a further step deeper. If s/he uses it with ideological and cultural awareness, then it's another step deeper. If s/he has a theoretical, aesthetic, cultural and ideological agenda (s/he is conscious of and in control of) his/her metamyth, then that's the deepest level.
What I am going to say is a simplification and a bit of a generalisation, however, rhyme, for example, could be seem as being (generally speaking) more right-wing (more conservative for sure, yet again, depending on what type of rhyme and rhyme pattern) than assonance, for example. This is not set in stone, but of one knows one's tropes, one knows their ideological power. Deus ex machina nowadays would require quite an effort and a pretty revolutionary aesthetic rationale nowadays to be used in a text without communicating an idea of Humankind that is not fatalistic or deterministic. It also depends on the 'genre' of the writing: it would be nigh on impossible to use it in a psychological text without it being such evident an example of aporia that the text itself would collapse at a glance; there are more plausible justifications fir it in fantasy and adventure, though, while in the former readers would generally accept it with good humour, in the latter it would raise eyebrows.
I understand all of that, but Nathan asked a specific question and that's all this topic is about, answering his question.I gather, as a new member, you might not be aware of the one rule in this group. Stay on topic or start a new topic. Otherwise, anything goes. Something to keep in mind.
I thought I was answering Nathan's question.He asked if it should be avoided, and I said that if one looks at its moral and ideological implications, one should. He asked what readers make of it, and I said where readers find it more or less acceptable. He asked for general thoughts, and I gave a general framework of the trope...
Actually, one of my stories was sort of based on Deus Ex Machina thingie. It's an easy way out but if played well - and gods serve as something more than just a lazy way to explain coincidences or plot twists - I don't see anything wrong in using that trick. A lot of myths and ancient literature (like, say, Oedipus the King) was based on Deus Ex Machina but it doesn't make them any worse by that.So like always, it's not really about the trick, it's about whether you can blend it properly into your story. If you use it consciously, it can work really good. If you just don't know how to justify something so you're involving gods or "it was just a dream", better drop it.
Adriano wrote: "I thought I was answering Nathan's question.He asked if it should be avoided, and I said that if one looks at its moral and ideological implications, one should. He asked what readers make of it,..."
You did, but, you went off on a tagent. We encourage free discussion and discussions evolve sometimes. That's fine. But forccing a discussion to evolve is not fine. I hope you can see the difference.
There's a play in which Euripides gratuitously introduced an obstacle at the end so Athena could appear (out of the machine) to tell the people to let the main characters go. apparently he liked it.But when the only escape is deus ex machina, the problem is set deep in the plot. the middle, or even the beginning, have to be rewritten to provide some better way of dealing with it.
the only time I actually didn't mind a Deus Ex, was in The Dark Tower series of Stephen King, where he pointed out exactly what he was doing. kind of tongue in cheek. but that's about the only one I can think of where it was done and done well. as for doing it, I think it should be handled carefully and if you can't do that, avoid it like the plague.
Well, Jane Austen used one in Northanger Abbey, but that was in the denouement, in order explain (view spoiler), which we knew was going to happen somehow.
I really am against the use of Deus Ex Machina... Unless it involves giant eagles, in which case, it's perfectly fine. ;)
Fringe Fiction Unlimited
Books mentioned in this topic
Northanger Abbey (other topics)Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (other topics)
Oliver Twist (other topics)
About a Boy (other topics)
Authors mentioned in this topic
Jane Austen (other topics)Euripides (other topics)
Thomas Hardy (other topics)
How, as writers, do you deal with it? Do you actively try and write your story to prevent it, or do you just let it flow out of your brain and through your fingertips, because writing a story from start to finish is hard enough as it is?
And for you readers out there, how do you react when you see it, or do you even notice it at all? Do indie books succumb to this trap more often than traditional pubs, or is it pretty much equally split?
I don't typically read YA, or watch the movies modeled after their best books. I'll get the Red Box, but that's it. I got the idea for this question, because I do watch a lot of Cinema Sins. They like to pick on the YA movies with the term "Deus Ex Machina." So much so, they don't even say the whole phrase, they'll say "Tris' mother shows up right in time Ex Machina." Maybe I should watch less Cinema Sins, and read the books or watch the movies first, but starting there first always kills it for me. I spend the whole time laughing at all the "Ex Machina" going on.
It got me thinking about my own writing, and how I would painstakingly go through and try and avoid writing it in. Every major event needs to be wrapped up, either with a casual throw off in dialogue, or intricately placed in the plot.
As a reader, which do you prefer? I would assume it depends on how big the plot point is, or the scene that's unfolding. The best way to illustrate this is to analyze both Spiderman series of movies.
Toby: Peter Parker just so happens to be the student who gets bitten by a radioactive spider ex machina. It's set up for us after a scientist lady casually says "we're missing one." Of course, he's taking a photo of the lovely Mary Jane Watson, and just so happens to back into the path of the spider, get one bite, and the spider doesn't get anyone else....
Andrew: Peter's father just so happened to work with the films main badguy, so Peter sneaks his way into the building. Elaborate scene unfolds where Peter is snooping around Ozcorp and wanders into a room of radio active spiders and gets bitten by just one spider, gets out with no one noticing, and no alarms sounding off after he enters or leaves the private area, which wasn't locked ex machina.
Which do you prefer? Is it acceptable? General thoughts?