Why are writers cornered by Deus Ex?

Without reading the other replies:

I think points one (laziness) and three (poor planning) are much similar and probably intertwined. If a story is plotted out well from the start (whether mentally or in an outline), deus ex machina won't be needed. If the writer has to resort to such a technique at the end because of poor plotting, it smacks of laziness that they didn't plan in the first place or else redo what needed redoing to avoid such an outcome. Anybody can make the mistake of poor planning. But when one decides to whip out such an easy escape to avoid the hard work of fixing a story, then they're being lazy.

I speak from all sorts of experience of being way confused by my stories and needing to look back on them to see what might need work.

Point number two is unfortunate but I bet it happens. That's the price of being famous.

JJ - Deus Ex Machina is a device. It is neither good nor bad. However it is not a very popular device these days as people want to see their heroes solve the problem, and not some third party you haven't been introduced to until the moment they come in and save the day.

As has already been explained, the term comes from the ancient Greek plays. Something would be going on on stage, a war, something, and then, lowered or raised by machine (Deus Ex Machina - God in the Machine), an actor dressed as a God would come on stage and solve all the problems. This was acceptable at the time because the Greeks believed in the Gods and the whole point was that the Gods make the ultimate decisions, and if you are worthy they will support your cause.

These days that isn't as popular a theme. But it could be one. Conceivably someone could write a novel where good guy vs bad guy go at it and then suddenly out of the blue a god-like character that we've never met shows up and saves the day. The moral of the story could be, "Ultimately we have no control over our lives."

However, Deus Ex Machina, for the most part, doesn't work. It doesn't work because it is often a solution the author chooses having written himself into a corner with no way out. Instead of solving the problem it's like, "Um . . . and then . . . ah . . . then . . . a magical dog shows up and grants him three wishes." It's unsatisfying because typically it breaks from the style of the story, the reader feels cheated because they invested all this energy in the main character and the conflict he was facing and then it is resolved by a third party who has nothing to do with the story.

It is often seen in literature today as lazy writing.

But as with everything, Deus Ex Machina isn't bad in and of itself, but how people use it.

And btw here is the dictionary definition of it:

deus ex machina |ˈdāəs eks ˈmäkənə; -ˈmak-|
noun
an unexpected power or event saving a seemingly hopeless situation, esp. as a contrived plot device in a play or novel.

ORIGIN late 17th cent.: modern Latin, translation of Greek theos ek mēkhanēs, ‘god from the machinery.’ In Greek theater, actors representing gods were suspended above the stage, the denouement of the play being brought about by their intervention.

JJ Cooper said:

I'm hearing what you are saying - but we're writing fiction. Anything can happen.

I'm contracted to sell books and write the best book my memory and imagination will allow. My readers will judge me.

The ending is difficult - but there is usually a few paths to take. If the author makes shit up that doesn't seem logical or reasonble, then they deserve to be outed as 'Deus Ex Machina'

JJ

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When you write fiction, you write your world within the rules you create for it. Then you stick to those rules. Your readers accept them as fact just as much as they would accept gravity on earth and a blue sky. You treat the world you create as though it's not fiction - because to the characters you create, it's the only reality they know.

There can be last minute saves pulled off effectively, but it HAS to be done within the confines of the mythology you create, otherwise anyone invested in the story will make a sour face, call foul, and post nasty things on the Internet.

A good last minute save, IMO, was the end of the first Jurassic Park movie. The T-Rex came in and ate the raptors - I don't think too many people were expecting that, but it was acceptable within the world the movie created. We knew T-Rex was on the loose; we knew he was an alpha dog predator who was going around eating other dinos, and the whole point of that movie (sort of) was that eventually the dinosaurs would get around to doing what it was dinosaurs were supposed to do. It wasn't like they had established that T-Rex had never been created on the island or that he was malformed in some way so that he couldn't attack and survive.

Then there's DeM...

Imagine that for say 3 LONG novels you have a writer who establishes certain rules for her universe. Let's say these rules are:

1. My characters don't play well with others in large numbers unless they only eat animals as opposed to humans.

2. My characters are so unbeleivably gorgeous no one can miss them.

3. My characters cannot procreate sexually.

4. My characters have a pact with a secondary set of characters forbidding ONE action; going against this pact will result in the death of all of my characters.

5. My characters must answer to a higher social body that only leaves Europe in extreme cases where eradication is necessary for punishment. One member of this social body has the ability to see the entire life of anyone - beginning to end - simply by touching them; he has touched at least one of my characters.

6. One of my characters is a precognitive telepath who can see her family at all times -- especially her two favorites: her brother and new sister in law; the ONLY time she can't look in on them if she wants is when one is in close proximity to their mortal enemy and therefore in mortal danger.

7. No one knows my characters exist as anything other than human.

8. It is agonizing to become one of my characters' species so that it requires writhing in agony for three days as though one's whole body were on fire.

9. One a character transforms from human to my other species, they are uncontrollable, insatiable, blood crazed fiends for at least a year.

10. There's a nifty love triangle built based on the fact that the two males involved are natural enemies.

Now, imagine that in book (LONG book) 4, this same writer just disregards all of those rules and in doing so undercuts all of the dramatic tension she's built through all of those other novels. She poises a massive all in battle and....

1. Well, the nice one asks nicely so suddenly there are allies.

2. A few hundred of them show up in a town so small they go ga-ga over EVERY single new face... but I don't think anyone noticed. (and they all had "sparkling" personalities to boot...)

3. But those MC's were too darn pretty not to have a perfect little rock hard bundle of terror.

4. Well, I guess it's ok if the character's old friends go out and hunt around the little town while they're visiting; the secondary characters can turn a few blind eyes. They're only honor bound to protect the humans from brutal, painful death... it's for a good cause after all. (that kid really is cute.)

5. The hierarchry makes a mass exodus from Europe. The leaders; the guard. (yikes, even their wives) AND... AND... they shake hands, shrug and walk away.

6. She lost contact with both of them (because of the rock hard bundle of terror)... and didn't think it was worth mentioning.

7. Except that one maid from an obscure tribal region who just happens to be cleaning the love nest and knows instantly what the MC is and how to fix things when they get out of hand.

8. Except that my female MC doesnt want the others to feel bad... so she keeps quiet.

9. Now she wouldn't be special or ladylike if she went all blood happy; she can control herself - it doesn't even take much effort. Now we all marvel and her wonderfulness.

10. Nevermind - he wasn't in love with you; it was the rock hard bundle of terror (that's ten minutes old) he wants.

11. While we're at it, lets just give supergirl a nice shiny telepathic shield that she can magically extend around her family/friends at will to make sure the bad guys can't hurt them at all. And while we're going down this road the bundle of terror gets to be a superchild who's not only a genius of mythic proportions, but grows superfast so she can marry her true love by the time she's two.

THATs Deus ex Machina.

illiterwrite said:

The example that immediately comes to my mind is My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult. She sets up this great conundrum, and you wonder how it'll work out, and then at the end, something totally out of the blue happens that takes care of the whole issue. I know I felt cheated, and I haven't read any other book of hers because of it.

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I don't think this is a Deus ex Machina. It is annoying as hell, I will grant you. But JP always goes for the maximum emotional gut-wrench, so it's not that surprising. Here's why I think it's not: the family all battles each other, and by the end the big sis gets her way (trying not to spoil it here folks). IMO the climax comes when we find out who really incited the court case. The book's basically over, the conflict has receded, and then BOOM! The really bad thing happens and the big sis changes her mind. But in my opinion, the story's conflict had ended before then. The really bad thing that comes out of the blue is more for concluding character development (and for breaking your heart) than it is for concluding the plot.

Oh, that's definitely a prime example of DEM all right, for reasons I won't go into here in case other thread-readers haven't read the book.

But Jeez...the Really Bad Thing enables her sister to, well...let's just say the RBT negates the previous 300 pages, renders the entire book unnecessary and had me considering tracking down Picoult and bludgeoning her with a baseball bat.

Kitty Pryde said:

...The really bad thing that comes out of the blue is more for concluding character development (and for breaking your heart) than it is for concluding the plot.

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Which shows it was completely unnecessary.

Wasn't it Checkov (paraphrasing wildly here) noting that if you have a gun in act 1 or 2 it better go off in 3 and if a gun goes off in 3 it better appear before then.

HeronW said:

Wasn't it Checkov (paraphrasing wildly here) noting that if you have a gun in act 1 or 2 it better go off in 3 and if a gun goes off in 3 it better appear before then.

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I don't know about that, but there's a screenwriting axiom that if you place a rifle over the fireplace, someone better be getting shot at some point.

Yes, in the Greek plays, the conflict was often resolved by the gods appearing at the very end. Actors were lifted onto a roof by the mechane (a sort of crane). Thus the Gods appeared by nowhere from a machine.

It has come to mean any improbable plot device used to resolve the conflict, most especially those that take the resolution from the characters' hands and render the entire conflict and drama essentially meaningless.

I do consider the end in the Picoult book a deus ex machina. It's a cheap and easy out.
Sometimes it is laziness on the part of an author, but I think that on the most part it is simply poor planning. Someone writes themselves into a corner and can't figure their way back out.

Cyia said:

I don't know about that, but there's a screenwriting axiom that if you place a rifle over the fireplace, someone better be getting shot at some point.

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It originated from Chekhov though, yes. It's even called "Chekhov's gun".

I guess I don't think My Sister's Keeper is a DEM for this reason: the book could have ended before Really Bad Thing happened. The plot had concluded. The conflict had concluded. The girls were satisfied. The parents were satisfied, at least that everyone got their wishes, if not really pleased about the whole thing. The family had grown emotionally. It was heartwarming. Like I said, it felt like it was only there to make the reader sad, and reveal one last thing about the big sis's character. Definitely a book throwing moment, but not a DEM. And it didn't render the rest of the book unecessary. All the characters grew in all sorts of ways. Just because you make it back to where you started from at the end, doesn't mean the journey was wasted!

SPOILERS FOR MSK AHEAD.





If a girl getting run over at the end of the book and having her organs donated to her sister, thereby saving her life isn't DEM, what the hell is?

As you said yourself, it wasn't necessary. The conflict was concluded, more or less...except, Picoult had to play God and wrap everything up in a way that took the resolution out of the hands of her characters.

scarletpeaches said:

SPOILERS FOR MSK AHEAD.





If a girl getting run over at the end of the book and having her organs donated to her sister, thereby saving her life isn't DEM, what the hell is?

As you said yourself, it wasn't necessary. The conflict was concluded, more or less...except, Picoult had to play God and wrap everything up in a way that took the resolution out of the hands of her characters.

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I just Googled this book (having not read it before) and I was sitting here thinking "don't go there... don't go there... don't... GAH!!!!" *reaches for red hot spork*

I figured it was something like this - it's not always good to be right.

MORE SPOILY SPOILERS:

I guess I felt like the point of 'My Sister's Keeper' was that at the beginning, the big sister needs to make her own choices about her health and her body, and by the end, she's gained the right to do so. Conflict resolved. So when the little sis dies, the big sis chooses to accept tissue donations, rather than being forced to take them. Showing the outcome of autonomy in action. Yet still infuriating.

ETA: In a lot of books, the conflict is 'we gotta save the little sick girl.' But in this book the conflict is, 'should we let the little sick girl have control over her life?'

Kitty Pryde said:

MORE SPOILY SPOILERS:

I guess I felt like the point of 'My Sister's Keeper' was that at the beginning, the big sister needs to make her own choices about her health and her body, and by the end, she's gained the right to do so. Conflict resolved. So when the little sis dies, the big sis chooses to accept tissue donations, rather than being forced to take them. Showing the outcome of autonomy in action. Yet still infuriating.

ETA: In a lot of books, the conflict is 'we gotta save the little sick girl.' But in this book the conflict is, 'should we let the little sick girl have control over her life?'

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I disagree that all the conflict was resolved. I don't think anyone was happy with the sister's decision, and that's why the ending felt like a cop-out to me. I felt like there were only two ways to end the book; instead, Picoult chose a totally random, tragic event to take any further decision-making out of the characters' hands.

To you, it WAS resolved. And I think there are a lot of people who agree with you, because I know others who didn't mind the ending.

IdiotsRUs said:

ETA: think about War of the Worlds. The whole thing is about the fight against the Martians and how they are destroying us puny earthlings. Then DAH DAH! the common cold kills them.

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I wouldn't call it a DeM -- it's actually an interesting, ironic conclusion. The WORLD of intelligent humans can't defend themselves against invaders... leave it to the world's smallest (and brainless) organisms to save the world.

Also, DeM is not just inappropriate or unsatisfying endings. DeM is very specific: it's literally a divine intervention.

Imagine a thriller: the hero went through hell and fire trying to save the world from destruction, and at the very end, when nothing seems to work anymore and there are only 5 seconds left before the nuclear bomb blows up, an angel comes down from the clouds and say, "Look, you people are good people, so we'll give you a chance" and she makes the bomb disappear. The end.

That's a Deus ex Machina. It's a divine intervention that comes from nowhere, resolving the central conflict nicely and neatly without any forethought.

Palmfrond said:

LOTR always did seem a bit deus ex machina to me. The giant eagles fly Frodo and Sam out of Mordor at the end. Why couldn't the eagles just fly Frodo and the ring directly to Mount Doom from the Shire? What's with all the walking?

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This has always bothered me too!

To answer the OP:

Personally, I don't know why authors resolves to using that device. Sometimes it has to do with the genre -- fantasy may allow a bit more "divine interventions" than, say, a contemporary drama.

Is it because the author is lazy or pressured? I don't know, but my guess is that sometimes writers have GREAT premises, beginnings and middles, but they don't know how to end the damn thing. Even Stephen King does that -- sometimes he has a great story idea but he just ends it poorly because, perhaps, he can't think of a great ending to a great story. Still, it's not a reason enough for a DeM. To me, that's a cop-out. It's akin to the writer saying, "Oh, I give up. I can't think of anything, so I will let God/fate take care of the final resolution."

JJ, you're right when you say that we're working on fiction and anything can happen.

However, foreshadowing and setup are your friends. You don't have to give away the big ending, but you should also not have a god appear and save the day when it was unknown whether or not gods exist in the world you're writing. Big twists and clever reveals almost always work better when the author leaves a trail of breadcrumbs throughout the story, not when they smack you on the back of the head with it at the last second.

Palmfrond said:

LOTR always did seem a bit deus ex machina to me. The giant eagles fly Frodo and Sam out of Mordor at the end. Why couldn't the eagles just fly Frodo and the ring directly to Mount Doom from the Shire? What's with all the walking?

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There were couple explanations for this, though I don't recall them very strongly. For one, Eagles flying into Mordor would be a lot more obvious than two little Hobbits sneaking into it. There were millions of orcs between the Black Gates and Mt. Doom, and it's quite conceivable that, seeing Eagles coming, they could be waiting. Also, remember how Treebeard and the Ents had to be convinced into going to war, and how, for a long time, they hadn't wanted to interfere? I've heard it explained that the Eagles acted similarly, and probably took time to reach their decision to interfere. For example, think of America's reluctance to join the fray during the world wars.

katiemac said:

JJ, you're right when you say that we're working on fiction and anything can happen.

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Anything can happen that makes sense within the context of the story. It doesn't matter if it makes sense in reality or on TV or on Pluto. It just has to make sense in the context of the story. When it doesn't--even if it is something that would make sense in real life--it's necessarily bad.

In my current WIP Thor literally comes and helps my MC out. Not sure that's DeM though, since Thor is bar hopping throughout the novel.

maestrowork said:

I wouldn't call it a DeM -- it's actually an interesting, ironic conclusion. The WORLD of intelligent humans can't defend themselves against invaders... leave it to the world's smallest (and brainless) organisms to save the world.

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Hmm possibly. Still disappointing for me.

Also, DeM is not just inappropriate or unsatisfying endings. DeM is very specific: it's literally a divine intervention.

It's a divine intervention that comes from nowhere, resolving the central conflict nicely and neatly without any forethought.

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Originally yes. Yet the phrase has evolved. My dictionaries give the definition as : a contrived climax or denouement.

Websters gives these definitions:

1 : a god introduced by means of a crane in ancient Greek and Roman drama to decide the final outcome 2 : a person or thing (as in fiction or drama) that appears or is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty

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It doesn't have to be literally god.

For LORT in the book version, yes the eagles had to be convinced to join the cause. They came to frodos aid in mordor only after the the bulk of the enemies had been destroyed and it was then safe to do so.

And not only that, but like the other person said, a bunch of rather large eagles flying into mordor would have caught the attention of the "great eye" therefor they would have been killed and probably quiet easily.

Also, in the movie version because I can't remember this specific part in the book version, you'll notice that they don't go in of their own accord. Gandalf whispers to that seemingly ever present moth thing that then goes and alerts the eagles, just as had happened when gandalf was caught on the tower of isengard by sauraman, or whatever his name was.