: Re: Can fiction be written without a coincidence? Does every fiction has a coincidence? Is there any evidence for a fiction not having a coincidental occurring at all ? I understand by the time

@Frith254

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Of course fiction could be written without coincidence. Things can follow a linear path and reach their foregone conclusion, as they do sometimes in real life.

However, coincidence is not a "binary" category - things have some (possibly unknown) probability of happening. If a story hinged on the possibility of someone walking in on a private conversation of some characters, it would be less of a coincidence than relying on a coin landing on it's edge and remaining so. But also the former is coincidence - just more likely than the latter.

So writing without any coincidence in the extreme sense is probably very difficult. Therefore, the real question should not be whether it could be written this way, the question (as with every literary device) is what purpose does coincidence serve in the story, specifically coincidence that is emphasized as such. You can then decide you don't want to achieve that purpose in your writing, or to achieve it with other means.

To answer this, I think there are two major things coincidence achieves in fiction:

Allowing interesting and surprising plot twists, especially in critical points in the story. The fact that many things COULD happen, but a specific one DID happen, allows you to choose the one that serves the story most. When escaping enemies, the heros could find an undetectable alley that allows them to escape quietly, or they might not notice the alley and have to run in broad daylight in the market square, leading to an exciting chase. Choose the one that is more interesting to you.
Adding a sense of wonder and excitement. Coincidence comes many times bound together, paradoxically, with a sense of fate/destiny/prophecy [in fantasy. In a 007-novel it would be the hidden hand of MI5, for example]. The reason for this is that when you have a known fate for a character, then reality has to somehow arrange itself around this fate, which leads to coincidences to happen. In this way, coincidence is really not coincidence - it's intelligent design in the guise of coincidence, which generates a sense of mystery and wonder.

The last point I'd like to make is how much coincidence is allowed. Here, I'd like to paraphrase "Sanderson's First Law of Magics", which states that: "An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic". Similarly, I'd suggest that the more unlikely the coincidence, the less should it be relied on to solve problems in the story. For example,

If you want the evil genius to die of a heart-attack right before he
presses the big red button that will destroy the world, he better be
an 80-year-old with a heart condition, not a 33-year-old in top
condition.
However, if the 33-year-old in top condition is just the
hero's butler, and you use his sudden death to bring a new butler to
the mansion, it does not matter how coincidental his death is. Kill him with
a simple accident or a shocking heart-attack - the reader won't care, since
the coincidence is not critical to the story.

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