: Re: Is there such a thing as too inconvenient? I find myself often being irritated at elements in situations that help characters succeed, elements which are also highly unlikely or even illogical.

The twin tropes you are referring to are Deus ex Machina and Diabolus es Machina. In both cases an event comes out of nowhere, not foreshadowed, to effect a drastic change.

Both tropes are frowned upon. For example, Marion Dane Bauer in her book on writing, would say to her writing students "If you end your story by having your main character get hit by a truck, you have just flunked." (taken from the above tvtropes link, didn't find original source)

There is a little more leeway with inconvenience than with convenience: an additional challenge for the characters to face is more interesting than the challenge getting solved all by itself. Nonetheless, "things going wrong" would usually take the shape of "everything that could go wrong, goes wrong" - things that are plausible within the story. (On the flip side, if everything goes according to the best-case scenario, it's a bit underwhelming.) A problem that comes out of left field, particularly in the last part of the novel - it's not a good thing.

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: If your editor says something might look unprofessional, you should listen to your editor. Your editor is a professional, whose task is precisely to make your work appear at its best. We,

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: How to describe POV characters? I want to describe my first person perspective character who's narrating without doing the Wattpad "mirror scene." How would I go about this?

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: In a written medium, your readers can only identify your characters by what you give them. We cannot "see" your characters. So, if at any point in the story there's a John, and then again

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: First I would ask, Why are you creating two characters with the same name? It creates the problem that you are asking about: how do you distinguish them? Is there some reason why both characters

: Re: Is there such a thing as too inconvenient? I find myself often being irritated at elements in situations that help characters succeed, elements which are also highly unlikely or even illogical.

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: If your editor says something might look unprofessional, you should listen to your editor. Your editor is a professional, whose task is precisely to make your work appear at its best. We,

: How to describe POV characters? I want to describe my first person perspective character who's narrating without doing the Wattpad "mirror scene." How would I go about this?

: In a written medium, your readers can only identify your characters by what you give them. We cannot "see" your characters. So, if at any point in the story there's a John, and then again

: First I would ask, Why are you creating two characters with the same name? It creates the problem that you are asking about: how do you distinguish them? Is there some reason why both characters

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