: 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.

@Candy753

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The art of the twist is not given to every writer. Many weak writers think of the swooping dragon as a surprise twist, but their readers don't see it that way.

Twists are successful when the reader is taken entirely by surprise, but then tells himself "of course, I should've seen that coming!" - but he didn't.

They are failures when the reader is taken by surprise and then goes back through the pages (real or in his memory) to figure out what he must have missed because it just can't be that there's suddenly a dragon and nobody ever mentioned it. And sure, he'll find some nameless, unimportant character casually mentioning the existence of dragons in general in a throwaway remark somewhere buried in a sideplot.

So your countermeasure as a writer is mastering the art of foreshadowing. The countless hours of Game of Thrones fan commentary are great examples of that. The foreshadowing was done obvious enough that people understood that something was coming, but everyone had different ideas about what it would be.

So properly done, your dragon would not suddenly appear. But there could be omens that something would happen. Omens that the final decision would be out of the hands of the hero despite his struggles. Or prophecies that a long gone danger would rear its head once more and sweep away the darkness. There could be events throughout the story that only in hindsight are clearly seen as a dragon awakening. And so on.

And yes, to answer your initial question, there is such a thing as "too inconvenient" and it's rampant in movies. In fact, many comedies are based on just this idea, when the events that stop the heroes from the actually very simple thing they want to do go from bad luck to unbelievable to outright silly.

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