: Re: How to foreshadow to avoid a 'deus ex machina'-construction The plot in my story revolves around a certain ability of the MC that is normally not available, unless the circumstances are just

@Cody1607638

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I'm forcefully reminded of Stardust in which the rather complex details of Una's contract to Madame Semele are made plain and the expectation is that unless she outlives the witch she's stuck with her. As it turns out the contract is not quite as ironclad as it appears, which comes as a surprise to spite the pieces being there almost from the beginning.

You can do something similar in this case, the character has an ability, maybe they've even used it before, but the expectation is that it was an impossible coincidence and they can't repeat their one-time feat, until they can and do. To keep the reader off balance the circumstances around the initial incident should be reported in such a way that the reader thinks the requirements are either more complex than they really are or different because they focus on details that aren't actually important to the use of the ability but were a focus of the characters involved. Purely as an example an ability may only work at a full moon, however the only time it's ever been demonstrated to work is when a full moon marked the spring equinox, people have forgotten it works at the full moon and believe you can only do X at the spring equinox and it usually doesn't work, since the equinox and the full moon more often than not don't coincide.

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