: First, I'd like to clarify your use of "comet". A little googling indicates comets are typically measured at about 8 km = 5 mi. Something like that "landing in someone's back yard" would

@Caterina108

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First, I'd like to clarify your use of "comet". A little googling indicates comets are typically measured at about 8 km = 5 mi. Something like that "landing in someone's back yard" would be a globally catastrophic event. That itself could be a good story, but perhaps you meant a meteorite, a small piece of space debris that survived it's fall to earth.

Second, and more important, within the last (rough guess) decade or two, the idea that our lives meander through a series of arbitrary chance occurrences (could be "accidents") has made it's way into some more mainstream books and movies. The theme is at least as old as existentialism, finding it's modern roots in Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.

But based on my personal experience in the life I think occurrence of "two" independent accidents in a "single" drama is rare and strange. So it seems if I want to write a realistic story I should avoid occurrence of frequent accidents in it. In the other words it seems that a story which begins with an accident could be reasonably realistic even if this accident is too strange or rare to happen but a story with more than one accident seems unnatural and unrealistic.

On the other hand, Roy Sullivan has reportedly been hit by lightning seven times. While I think you're right in general, that a particular genre cannot have too many wild accidents, there are also cases where several accidents combined can create a type of mystery and confusion, such as an innocent man being found guilty of a crime, a guilty person getting away, etc. There's also the genre based on Shakespeare's, "The Comedy of Errors". And finally, realistic accounts of wars include many instances of both tragic and fortunate accidents that in total contributed greatly to the final outcome outside the control man.

So what the heck am I saying? Be original. If you want a lot of accidents, feel free to have them. Just make sure they make sense. One way of having something make sense is to be unapologetic about it - let the reader you know it would normally be absurd to see it this way, but from the perspective of your story (or the perspective a character) it is perfectly logical. Or in other words, ditto on what everyone else says... learn the rules but then feel free to break them in any way you want.

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