Deus Ex Machina endings

[Ivonia]

Are using those "bad" (Deus Ex Machina comes from old Greek plays where a "god" would come down literally from the stage and do something to "fix" all the problems at the end, usually because the story didn't seem to know how to do it any better)?

In a lot of my stories, I've been finding that I'm unintentionally using them a lot (but then again, my story does have religion and gods in it, and they do play a big role in the story as well, rather than just being an excuse to have flashy stuff thrown in). Some people might see that as a "cop-out" (an excuse, and usually a "lame" one) for not being able to come up with a more "sensible" ending.

So, what's your opinion on Deus Ex Machina endings? Would you see it as a "lame" way to end a story, or would you be willing to accept it for the sake of the story? I am trying to work both subtle and obvious hints given throughout the entire story, so that when it does happen, it won't seem like it just came out of nowhere.

Here's an example of one of my stories with a "Deus Ex Machina" ending (there are more though, but they do throw in a god or another supernatural being close to the end of the story).

I have an antagonist who believes he's doing the works of the gods, via killing "heretics" and non-believers (and being pretty brutal about it. This was largely inspired by real world events, such as the Crusades). He even gets the hero to help him at first (since the hero at first believes the antagonist to be doing "good").

In my "deus ex machina" ending, just as the antagonist is about to "offer a sacrifice to the gods" in thanks for his imminent victory over the "heretics", an angel appears at the end to condemn the antagonist, and warn him that what he'd been doing was in fact the exact opposite of what the gods have been trying to teach them.

Interestingly, the angel does not kill the antagonist, but rather just points out that he hasn't been doing the will of the gods at all (After the stuff the antagonist had the protagonist do, including killing innocent children unintentionally, it just wouldn't feel right if the hero himself doesn't finish the job).

The angel then also strips them of their magic, being angered at the misuse of the powers they were given (although it's a universal "punishment", so it's not just "the bad guys" that lose their powers. And yeah, there's a reason for that, and a small, hidden moral message as well hehe).

[Richard]

DEM endings tend to be unfathomably cheap, and mostly serve to diminish the hero's position. If there's a connection between the two - for instance, the hero's struggle is to petitions the god to intervene, or the hero can be seen as having been the instrument of that god's will, perhaps, but having several hundred pages, followed by an angel popping down from the sky and fix everything would really irritate me.

(As a random example, Small Gods by Terry Pratchett has a god appearing to fix everything at the end, but it's the one we've been travelling with, and whose developing relationship with the main character, and seeing its conclusion once he has his power restored and the main character becomes just another fleshy human is more important than divinely smacking down the bad guy)

[Saanen]

The story you outline would be infinitely so much more satisfying if the angel didn't just appear. Instead, if the characters in your story had been trying to summon or attract an angel, expecting to be rewarded or something, then the angel's appearance and ensuing disgust would come across less as a deus ex machina. If you had the angel's expected appearance be a major theme in the story it might shift the story's focus a little, but I think it would make it stronger.

I don't like deus ex machina endings--too glib, too obvious, too "well, I've got to end it somehow." But it's easy enough to make the characters the instigators of the DEM ending in some way and avoid it seeming so contrived.

[azbikergirl]

From the reader's perspective, deus ex machina endings are unsatisfying because she has invested all this time and (hopefully) emotion into the story, waiting for the main character to rise above his normal limitations and save the day. Readers like to identify with the characters, to live vicariously through them. If an angel comes along and fixes the problem, what does that tell the reader about her own hopes and dreams? That she's helpless? We want to feel empowered, that we can make a difference in our own lives. We like the good guy to win, and we like the hero to solve his own problems.

[DaveKuzminski]

Changing the direction slightly, there's another kind of story that is difficult to handle as well. That's when the main character always wins. This can be especially difficult to handle when the situation is such that any loss would automatically end the story.

[preyer]

king's 'the stand' had the hand of God come down to destroy the missile in las vegas, if i remember right. horrible, simply horrible. worse, i read the unabridged version, which was even a greater waste of time.

i think it's a compelling idea to have the antag pull the protag's strings. in that, i think it sounds like a winner (to me, at least). i don't know how your story is, though. it might work if there's sufficient reason for it to happen and the angel's appearance is foreshadowed well in advance. still, a brief appearance in some other form wouldn't hurt, either. 'i came to you as a starving dog when you had ample food, and you kicked me. i came to you as a beggar woman without a shawl in the storm and you turned me away from your door. i came to you as a lame horse and you did not kill me.'
not that, of course, but some clues along the way to suggest its arrival is nigh might be in order. by doing that, it's hard to really say it's a DEM ending, even if it's a lighter shade of the same colour.

even if your novel is finished, it shouldn't be terribly difficult to add, eh? having the angel poof into being out of thin air and without justification will likely pisss a lot of readers off. nothing in a book is out of the realm of possibility as long as there's a reason for it, so what's the reason for the angel being there? a prophecy? the angel was there all along? it began as a minour character? there was discussion of the angel somewhere? is meeting the angel their goal?

'But it's easy enough to make the characters the instigators of the DEM ending in some way and avoid it seeming so contrived.' ~ agreed. doesn't have to be fifty additional pages, either. it could be if you wanted, and that would be interesting, too, and it might likely change the complexity of the story and the characters. it's rather an interesting angle for the protag to commit sins right in front of the a god's agent on earth while knowing he's being watched from the shadows, no?

[Rabe]

So, what's your opinion on Deus Ex Machina endings? Would you see it as a "lame" way to end a story, or would you be willing to accept it for the sake of the story? I am trying to work both subtle and obvious hints given throughout the entire story, so that when it does happen, it won't seem like it just came out of nowhere.

My own four cents (adjusted for inflation) here:

Yes, they are bad. It's one of the main reason (other than complete inability to revise unnecessary world building) that I don't like Tolkien. The many, many, many, dues ex machina in the books. Including the 'dramatic' ending of having the eagles rescue Sam and Frodo just as the lava is about to overcome them - or Sauron's forces all fleeing at the same moment that he is destroyed.

If it's truly a deus ex machina ending, I, as a reader, would not only feel it lame, but feel that I was cheated. I spent all that time reading the story to find out how the 'hero' is going to resolve the underlying conflict and then discover that it was all moot anyway because it was solved through the use of the gods.

In your story, unless you establish some reason why the angel *couldn't* appear before the guy much earlier, I'd feel cheated. Why now? What was different now? What made the gawds suddenly take notice? Why did the hero have to go through all the trouble of doing the heroic things if an angel was just going to come down and solve the problems for them?

I believe a great ending can save a book (Elizabeth Bear's 'Scardown' had a *great* ending that changed my opinion of the book) but a bad ending will destroy a great novel.

If you find yourself coming up with deus ex machina endings for your stories, then when you revise work backward and make it less so. Figure out why it was that the angel appears at that time and undoes all the heroic work that your protagonist (and yourself) has done previous. Was it trapped away? Did the evil guy just dismiss the warnings as being made from 'evil'? What?

And that's my five cents. (damned inflation!)

Rabe...

[Rabe]

king's 'the stand' had the hand of God come down to destroy the missile in las vegas, if i remember right. horrible, simply horrible. worse, i read the unabridged version, which was even a greater waste of time.


An unfair assessment for two reasons:

1> the book had the appearence and interaction of 'god' in all throughout the story, usually in the form of Mother Abigail, the prophet. God spoke to and through her as the human agent for the divine, so having a 'hand of god' appear at the end of the story is not DEM. The story also had the form of the devil working through the form of the Walking Man (otherwise known as Randall Flagg). The interaction and intervention of the divine good/evil beings was well documented throughout the book.

2> what happened at the end of the book was perceived to be 'like' a hand. It was never said to be the 'literal hand of god'. And that event came about through activities of the characters and not some magical way to end the story.

Rabe...

[Vomaxx]

Are using those "bad"

So, what's your opinion on Deus Ex Machina endings?

an angel appears at the end to condemn the antagonist, and warn him that what he'd been doing was in fact the exact opposite of what the gods have been trying to teach them.Interestingly, the angel does not kill the antagonist, but rather just points out that he hasn't been doing the will of the gods at all

1) Yes, very bad.

2) They are awful. They infuriate readers. JRR Tolkien himself sometimes is criticized for using eagles at crucial times (three times, in fact: once in The Hobbit and twice in LOTR).

3) "An angel appears..." Um... this particular solution is rather an old one: see Genesis 22, Abraham and Isaac. I would avoid it. Besides its lack of originality, God may own the copyright. :)

[azbikergirl]

Changing the direction slightly, there's another kind of story that is difficult to handle as well. That's when the main character always wins. This can be especially difficult to handle when the situation is such that any loss would automatically end the story.
I agree to a point. I dislike stories that end on a note of utter destruction and despair. "And the world ended." Now, if the hero fails, yet something still good comes of his failure, I won't mind. In fact, my novel ends that way. :)

[danahunter]

:ROFL:

Unless copyright law in Israel was really extensive, I imagine "angels appearing suddenly to save the day" is in the public domain by now. :D
However, like everyone else, I highly recommend you don't use it. You're drastically limiting your audience if you do. Angels coming down from on high might be just right for religious publications, but if you're planning to submit to secular markets, it's probably going to get you tossed. However, it's not really deus ex machina if the angel is one of the characters all along. Might also work if you show that angels cropping up unexpectedly is a semi-regular occurence in your world. A job hazard in the evil mastermind business, perhaps? You could go all sorts of places with something like that, including the villain thinking he's figured out a way to prevent those meddling gushy-goodies from poking their noses in.... Mwah ha ha!

Oh, yeah - and deus ex machina is a rather subjective thing. The eagles in Tolkien never bothered me. They're not ethereal beings, Gandalf calls them up (they don't have an "eagle sense" that tells them somebody's in trouble), and there's always the possibility they could fail even if that's not harped on. But you have to work harder to make it seem reasonable when you're dealing with gods, angels and natural disasters. In other words, your protagonist yelling "Sic 'em!" and setting the angel on the villain won't work, either.

Anyway. My two cents (I'm poor).

[Pthom]

Changing the direction slightly, there's another kind of story that is difficult to handle as well. That's when the main character always wins. This can be especially difficult to handle when the situation is such that any loss would automatically end the story.I assume you mean losses suffered by the protagonist. It seems to me that if any such loss automatically ends the story, then the story is pretty darned weak to begin with.

[Ivonia]

Cool replies thanks!

Well, for the current story I'm writing, it's limited to 20 pages, since it has to be a short story (and here I am trying to fit an epic saga into it hehe).

Yeah, I reread the story, and it seems too much happens, so I think I have to redo it entirely (luckily my story isn't due yet). How would this sound?

Magic is still a pivotal point to my story (although its source is derived from the gods, or "Spirits" as I call them), so I can't throw that out.

There is still a war concerning "heretics" that the established government wants to destroy (since they use technology, such as guns, cannons, and "horseless wagons", aka primitive steam engine). The "church" in my story believes that using that stuff is evil, as anyone can use it, whereas magic can only be utilized by certain people (namely the rich and faithful). The hero from a previous war is chosen to lead the hunt for the heretics.

As they hunt them down, the hero increasingly realizes that what they're doing is wrong. The fact that their magic grows weaker is evident of it (in many battles, magic overpowers technology). Finally the hero sees something terrible (that he did no less), and switches side when he "connects the pieces together" and sees what's really happening.

The "rebels" at this point increasingly begins to win (again, since magic seems to only be working sparingly at this point, for both sides), and the leader of the church demands to know why the gods have turned against him, at which point the angel shows up in a temple to condemn him, although stuff's been happening to show the downfall anyway. She also tells him that magic will be unusable by mortals until the day when their descendants see her once again in the skies (this part ties in with my novel, although it occurs much later).

The final battle ends when the hero kills the enemy leader (that guy that got the condemnation by the angel), and they reestablish order from the chaos caused by the enemy leader. They can no longer use magic, but now will rely instead on technology until the angel reappers "many generations from now" (aka the future, which has a sort of "Deus Ex Machina" event too, although it occurs in the middle of the story, rather than the end, and the angel still doesn't solve their problems).

The hero in this story also has special enchanted armor imbued with a special power. It was given to him as a gift by poor villagers earlier (before this story starts), which is basically a set of clothing that, at certain points (during battles, but also at other key events) glows with a radiant aura (and is more powerful than even the strongest steel platemail, the best armor available to them. He also has a sword that gives off a fiery aura). In the beginning of the story, his armor is quite bright, but as the story progresses, it gradually fades (even when he fights against the church).

The armor and sword are also symbolic to how the characters misuse their powers. I should definitely work that into the story more (it's kind of minor right now, and doesn't terribly affect the story).

-----------

Maybe I should just save this stuff for later (I already wrote out a first draft of it), and instead write about how the hero first obtains his special sword and armor hehe (although that would probably end up being a standard "swords & sorcerory" type of story. But at least it wouldn't be a "Deus Ex Machina" ending :)).

[DaveKuzminski]

Well, when your hero is the captain of a boat with a crew of 19, you have to take into consideration who he's going up against, particularly if it's his job to defend the port. If there's another boat to share in the fighting, good, but they still might be outnumbered not only in crew, but in vessels. Then if there's a reason why he and the crew can't abandon ship and have no place to retreat, it becomes really difficult trying to keep them from always being slaughtered when faced by invaders or raiders.

Of course, they're not constantly under attack, either. Still, I've found myself doing research into actual battles to find instances, which thankfully do exist, where small naval forces defeated larger forces or at least held their own.

[Arc_Honest]

i though Deus Ex Machina meant "God From the Machine?

[Richard]

It does - the machine being the contraption that brought the god onto stage to wrap things up.

[danahunter]

Yep. It now refers to any story contrivance that pulls a fix to a plot situation from one's nether regions. For example: Your hero's pressed into a corner, he's going to lose the fight with the villain - and so you bring up a sudden thunderstorm and kill off the villain with a handy bolt of lightning. Deus ex machina = something convenient for the author that didn't grow from the story itself.

[TheIT]

The author resorting to higher powers to solve the story always seems like a cheat to me. I'd rather see the story issues solved by the characters themselves than by some benevolent entity. If someone else is going to show up to fix everything, then why should the characters bother to try?

It's different if the characters themselves call on the higher power for help, though even that should be used sparingly. In Dungeons and Dragons that's a "god call", in which case the characters get what they deserve (and not necessarily what they want). One has to be careful with wishes. They can be interpreted in oh so many ways.

If used too often, the higher power can become cliched. It's why in Doctor Who they eventually destroyed the Sonic Screwdriver. The writers had gotten to the point where the Doctor could fix anything with it (including plot holes).

In the book I just read, the female protag was in a sword duel to the death which she was winning when out of nowhere an afreet popped in and spirited away her opponent because the afreet's master wanted a nifty sword. End of fight. Nowhere before this point did the author mention afreets or that the afreet's master was so powerful, so it struck me as coming out of nowhere. Later, the bad guy returns even more powerful and the fight resumes and is concluded. I still felt cheated because of the randomness of saving the bad guy in the first fight. Now, I liked the book well enough that I intend to continue reading the series, but that encounter left a bad taste.

[preyer]

i hate 'this ghost/spell/whatever will come to you in your hour of need....' well, hell, why bother reading the rest? i mean, right there it tells us what's going to happen, so why bother? but you can't really say that's a DEM ending, per se. comes awful close, though. i'm not a great author or anything, but even i try to set-up my left-field saves early enough for the reader to forget, but still plausible by the end. like one guy saying, 'hold on, i'm going to get the helicoptor,' then the rest of the team enters the ruins anyway, the guy who left is pretty much forgotten about until it's time for him to show up at the last second and airlift everyone out seconds before the temple collapses. hardly great literature, but at least it's foreshadowable (and, yes, not worth reading, either).

in your example, TheIT, i'd feel cheated a bit. i don't like feeling as if any random occurance can happen at any given time without provocation. especially in fantasy, it would feel very much like the author rolled a 12d and inserted whatever plot point corresponded to the same number on a chart regardless of its relevance, logic or plausibility.

[three seven]

In fact, my novel ends that way. :)I guess none of these 4,000 people needs to read it now then, eh? ;)

[badducky]

The tone is the difference.

If you are doing a Robin Hood:Prince of Thieves a la Kevin Costner, the deus ex machina ending works so well because the movie itself is so blisteringly cheesy that nothing - and I mean NOTHING - can top the cheese like the appearance of Captain Jean-Luc Picard except perhaps for the appearance of Leonard Nimoy with his ears intact. Or, Barbara Streisand in king drag.

Ben Johnson's The Alchemist uses the Deus Ex Machina whimsically, and bending the ending to the will of the Deus. In this scenario, the Deus is the landlord, who should, by all rights, be in charge. He steps into a face role on top of the character Face, taking over completely and landing that rich widow.

However, both of those examples share two facets: 1) They're hilarious. 2) During the course of the action characters keep re-iterating that someday this fellow is going to get here and he's in charge and probably quite upset.

Thus: Tone. Tolkein's heavy-handed machina is not as fun as Johnson's cynical farce. It is a corny, cheesy ending. So... run with that!

[azbikergirl]

I guess none of these 4,000 people needs to read it now then, eh? ;)
Nah, I've only spoiled it for the 200 or so people who've read this thread. :) The other 3800 people won't see it coming.
:popcorn:

[preyer]

personally i wouldn't consider 'robin hood' a DEM ending unless king richard were the one who came in from nowhere to save the day instead of showing up just to perform the wedding. the threat of his return may have had something to do with the sheriff's timing, i don't remember, but sean connery's character was just a cameo tacked onto the end (and it cost me a dinner with my g/f cuz i said he wasn't in it, she said he was. we saw this on our first real date together, so i kind of remember that, lol).

[Mac H.]

i though Deus Ex Machina meant "God From the Machine?If it is translated as "Mechanism of the Gods" it makes more sense.

It doesn't have to literally be a god - at the end of the movie "Dodgeball", the casket containing the money at the end which solved our heroes problem has the phrase 'Deus Ex Machina' engraved on the top of the casket.

Mac