: 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

@Annie587

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As others have said, people tend to notice others with common interests, and they tend to go to places where people with common interests are likely to go.

Suppose you are really interested in, say, Amish furniture. You are driving down the street and you see an Amish furniture store. Is that a bizarre coincidence. Probably not. In your drive you passed dozens, maybe hundreds of stores selling many different products. You noticed the one that interested you. If someone asked me if there are stores in my home town that sell golf clubs I'd have no idea, because I've never played golf and have no interest in golf. I might pass such a store every day and I wouldn't notice, because I don't care.

Suppose you said that a character loves cherry pie, and so he regularly goes to a bakery called "Fruit Pie Palace", and there he meets someone else who loves cherry pie. That wouldn't be strange or a bizarre coincidence. That would be exactly the sort of place you'd expect to go to meet such a person, and exactly the sort of person you'd expect to meet at such a place.

In your example, I'd expect someone interested in animal suicide might show up at a class in animal psychology. That doesn't seem strange or a coincidence at all. If you said that she took a class in French poetry or auto mechanics and met someone there interested in animal suicide, that would be more of a stretch. But I'd think that just saying that this is a class in animal psychology makes it not a surprising meeting.

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