Coincidence?

 RHYS BOWEN: Have you noticed that reviewers love to point out that you have coincidences in your books, as if this is some kind of failing? There is a coincidence, or maybe two coincidences in the book I am just finishing: ISLAND OF LOST BOYS. I expect reviewers to point this out. I don’t care. The coincidence had to happen to reward the characters for what they have been through. I couldn’t leave them with a bleak, depressing end to their story.

And real life is full of coincidences, isn’t it? Some of them quite amazing. When I was a teenager, going up to London to drama school, there was a horrific train crash on the line I would have taken. I was stuck in London and ended up walking home, fourteen miles in dense fog. That was the drama, not the coincidence. The latter was the number of people who told me that their father usually took that train, but for some reason was held up at work that night. So many lives saved by the smallest twist of fate.

Since then I have been amazed at chance meetings all over the world. My daughter was standing at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin when she heard a voice behind her she thought she recognized. Turned around and it was my next door neighbor’s mother!.   We were entering a temple in Candy, Sri Lanka, when a group of people came out, including two friends from Marin. We hadn’t know they were in Sri Lanka!  Recently we were in France and I started up a conversation with an English couple and… he went to the same school as John. Knew all the same teachers. 

And the most amazing coincidence of all:  Our first house was up for sale. It was a charming little cottage but suddenly too small for us with the arrival of a third child. A couple was hiking up our hill, saw the For Sale sign and came in to look around. They loved the house and bought it. A year later they had a baby girl–Gracie. I held her in my arms when she was two days old.  Fast forward about thirty years. A woman came up to me at a convention and introduced herself as the head of Thomas and Mercer. Gracie Doyle. Yes, THAT Gracie I had held when she was two days old! And I was just about to be published by Lake Union, a sister Amazon publishing house.  I sit with her at conventions. She came to New York to share in the celebration when I was nominated for the Edgar for THE VENICE SKETCHBOOK.

So I’m not sure of the dividing line between coincidence and fate. Karma. Destiny. If you believe in this, there is no coincidence, only what was destined to happen, so the reviewers have nothing to complain about, right?  So Reds, have there been amazing coincidences in your life? Have you ever used coincidence in a story? Got criticized for it? And readers, does coincidence in a story annoy you?

HANK: Rhys, I just GASPED. That is incredible! Whoa. Well, let’s see. Recently, I was doing a session in The Back Room, and one of the panelists was the fabulous Canadian Bestseller Samantha Bailey. In the 20 questions round, I asked another panelist, the brilliant Nita Prose (!!)  where  she’d grown up, and whether that affected her writing. She said she’d grown up in such a rural part of Canada that her address was only Rural Route 2.

So I laughed, and said that I had grown up in rural Indiana, and that MY address was only Rural Route 2, and so clearly that meant we were  neighbors. Ha ha.

Then Samantha Bailey (who is from Toronto) added that, such a coincidence, she had gone to summer camp in Indiana as a kid at a camp that was on Rural Route 2. 

I said: Union Camp? 

And she said yes! How did you know that?

And I said: Union Camp was right across the street from my house. And moreover, I WENT TO THAT SUMMER CAMP, TOO! 

What are the odds?

(And coincidence in a story? Oh, I guess it depends on whether I notice at the time.)

HALLIE EPHRON: Real life is full of coincidences. So is crime fiction. Isn’t there an Agatha Christie short story about a guy who walks out of a barber shop and passes his doppelganger going in? Turns out…. You guessed it, it’s the twin brother he never knew he had.

In my own writing, I like it best when something that *looks like* a coincidence turns out to have been engineered. Then it packs a double surprise. 

RHYS: Hallie, I don't think I would dare to bring off the unknown twin brother story!

LUCY BURDETTE: The strangest story I ever heard from my family: A commuter train crashed near my grandparents’ home in New Jersey. An official came to the door to tell my grandmother that her husband, Charles Isleib, had been killed. However, my grandfather, another Charles Isleib, was already home!

Oh my, now I’m getting story ideas based on that crazy coincidence…who was that second guy? (Trust me, there aren’t a lot of Isleibs floating around, so this was truly weird.)

And yes, reviewers do love to point out coincidences in books. By then it’s too late to do anything about it anyway:). Hopefully my writers group would point these out as I’m writing along, and also hopefully, I’d figure out a way to make the scenes more believable.

JENN McKINLAY: “I don’t believe in coincidence.” Isn’t that what the detectives alway say? I try to be very careful with coincidences in my stories - Hallie’s twist is genius. I don’t know if I’m just trying too hard but I can’t think of any weird coincidences in my life except for one. 

It was the middle of the night and a man called my apartment (this was pre cell phones), waking me up. He was clearly tipsy and he asked for Jenn. 

I said, “Speaking.” 

He said, “This is Mike.” 

Well, Mike was my college boyfriend, who I went back and forth with for four years - a very overwrought relationship - so I was dumbfounded. 

“It’s the middle of the night,” I said. “And I’m three hours behind you.” 

“No, you’re not,” he said. “You live across town.”

“Where are you calling from?” I asked.

“St Louis,” he said.

Then I started laughing. I had never been to St Louis in my life. This was a different Mike drunk dialing a different Jenn. When I explained it to him, he laughed, too. 

I’ve always thought it would be a great opener to a book…hmmm.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Jenn, now I'll be waiting for you to work that into a story! I can't think of any big real life coincidences that have happened to me, but I do believe they happen. There's a fine line in fiction. I've used a small one just for fun in my latest book, but I don't think I'd use coincidence to solve a mystery.

RHYS: Don't you love these amazing stories? So, dear readers--how do you feel about coincidence in a book you are reading? And who has an amazing coincidence to share in their own life?

Coincidence?

RHYS BOWEN: Do you read online reviews? I know I shouldn't, but I do. And then I'm miffed if someone says something snippy about my books, especially when I feel it's unjustified.  This happened to me the other day when I read a review of Murphy's Law, which is now an eleven year old book, which said the plot relied on coincidence. Apart from the fact that this book won four awards, the only coincidence in the story is that the false name my character is using becomes a prime suspect in a murder on Ellis Island. 

We're often told that coincidences are a no-no in writing, and I agree that we can't use coincidence to solve major plot points. However I'm always amazed how often coincidences happen in real life. Amazing coincidences.  Here are a couple from my own experience:
My daughter goes to Europe. She happens to be in Germany, looking at the Brandenburg Gate when she hears a voice behind her that she recognizes. She turns around and there is my good friend's mother. Neither knew the other would be in Europe.
Or how about this. We go to Ashland to the Shakespeare festival. We're waiting in line to get to our seats when we are tapped on the shoulder and our next door neighbors are standing there. What's more they have seats next to ours.
Or this. I'm in e-mail correspondence with a person who runs a book review site. We are getting along well and become chatty. Where do you live? She asks. In California. So do I. Where abouts? Just outside San Francisco. So do I. Where. San Rafael. So do I. We're neighbors.


And at Left Coast Crime two weeks ago I had to interview Guest of Honor Jacqueline Winspear. I started by quoting all we had in common: grew up in Kent, worked in London, moved to California, married someone called John, write about feisty young women in 1930s England, live five miles apart. Talk about about coincidence!

So my real life seems to abound with coincidences, but I'm not allowed to put them into books. Is that fair?

How about you? Can you remember any amazing coincidences in your life? Do you feel you are allowed to bring coincidence into your stories? And readers, does it annoy you when we do?


HALLIE : Rhys, you do live a charmed life! And yes, I allow myself ONE coincidence in a book, and it's got to be in the first act.

I do remember once we were camping in Shenandoah National Park and one of my husband's college students came walking out of the woods. Very unexpected. We ran into Another one of his students on the beach in Tangiers. Those Curry College students -- they do get around.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: We go to the grocery store. There is ..oh, gosh, I can't remember, but someone Jonathan went to law school with. Random, random. They just happened to be there. Couple days later, we're there again, and the person is there AGAIN. I literally said to Jonathan: If I put this in a book, no one would buy it.

At a convention in Florida a few weeks ago, Sleuthfest, a person came up to me and said: are you from Indianapolis? I said--yes, that's where I grew up. Long back and forth ensues, which I will spare you but it was hilarious and adorable. The upshot: she is the cousin of my first husband's first wife. Now I ask you--in a book--would you believe that?

LUCY BURDETTE: No I would not! And Hallie certainly wouldn't...Writing about three different amateur sleuths over the years, I am always struggling with coincidences. Why in the world would one food critic find two bodies in succession? I would freak out if I found even one...but figuring out another way to introduce the main conflict and draw the character into the mystery is not that easy. Sigh...I'm going to be working on this today so if anyone comes up with a good idea, please send it on!

Of course not--you'd say-aw, that could never happen. And yet...

JAN BROGAN- My husband and I went to a wedding in San Franscisco a few years back, and who was playing the piano for the band? My high school flame. From New Jersey. I had been absolutely crazy about him, but he was lukewarm.  The band did this really cool thing where they came around at cocktail hour and you got to sing a cappella  with them.  I wound up having a great time singing with his bandmates.  They started heckling him, the way guys do, refusing to believe I'd ever "waste my time"  going out with him.  It was perfect.  Later he even apologized for the way he had treated me (leading me on, mostly) It was a female fantasy come true!

I kept thinking it was like an opening to a movie it was so bizarrely coincidental. Which I think goes to Hallie's point. You can have a co-ocidence in the first act - in fact, most first acts probably DO have some coincidence  to get the story rolling. You just can't resolve the story with a co-incidence.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: The most bizarre thing I can think of in real life?  A couple of years ago we were invited to a 4th of July party by friends, held in an airplane hanger in a Dallas suburb that has one of the biggest fireworks shows in the country.  We sat out on the runway to watch the show and it was a great party, but afterwards the traffic was so terrible that a group of us stood around in the parking lot, visiting, until we thought it might actually be possible to drive.  A guy asked me if I wanted to share a seat on his beer cooler.  I said, "Sure," and sat down. And in that instant we really looked at each other and simultaneously said, "Oh, my God."

It was my first really serious boyfriend.  I was madly in love with him when I was fifteen and sixteen, and he dumped me for my best friend.  I hadn't seen him in more than thirty years.

It turns out it was not that bizarre.  He was a mutual friend of the friends who invited us to the party, but I didn't know that. (Did I still hold a grudge, you may ask? Not really.  Still like him?  He aged well:-))

In fiction, I'm always trying to write around coincidences.  You can't make them as obvious as the ones that happen in real life, so I think the key is misdirection.  Or at least I hope so, as I have more than Hallie's one in the WIP...

So dear friends who are readers--does it annoy you when you come across a coincidence in our books?