Friday, March 9, 2012

Distasteful deus ex machina?

I'm writing a book, and I'm afraid the ending may be a bit contrived.



The story is about a dragon named Nogard. He flies around and saves children from closet monsters. Then the closet monsters team up and lock Nogard in the back of the deepest, darkest closet in all the land.



It turns out that there's a female dragon named Ella who also saves children from closet monsters. She opens the closet and first thinks Nogard is one of the closet monsters, but after some convincing, she breaks his shackles, and they go off to fight closet monsters and live happily ever after...



I don't want my readers offended by this horribly contrived turn of events, does anyone have any advice?Distasteful deus ex machina?
Yes, that is deus ex machina. Norgard needs to do something to save himself or at least contribute to saving himself. Perhaps he tricks a closet monster into contacting Ella and saying there's a really bad monster where Norgard is.Distasteful deus ex machina?
Yes, your plot does exhibit a deus ex machina ending in a sense, but it could be avoided if you mentioned Ella at the beginning and had her work with Nogard or at least know him.

No comments:

Post a Comment