: Re: Is the following deus-ex-machina? If so, should I remove it? I wrote a novel called Animal Suicide. It's a mix of romance and dark humor. It's about a girl who, after a weird incident, postpones

@Moriarity138

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This doubles as an answer to your other question, How to make the reader "accept" absurdity?

Some books strive for the appearance of realism, others don't. In either case, what is most important is a) that the book follows its own rules and b) that it has a sense of emotional reality.

For instance, some books are built entirely on frameworks of improbable coincidence: Douglas Adams' books, for example, as well as Murakami's. That's part of the fabric of the work. Once the reader accepts that, it becomes just a part of the story.

However, all the coincidences in Adams and Murakami rarely work to solve problems for the characters --or if they do, they just as often create new ones. This matches the emotional reality that we have to work for the things we get. If your character has worked hard enough for his or her reward, the reader is more likely to accept it, even if the actual mechanism is improbable.

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