There Is no Such Thing as Coincidence: Fictional Plot and Verisimilitude

I am currently enjoying Swedish state television SVT's big science fiction venture Äkta människor (Eng. Real Humans) and would like to urge any and all Swedish readers who have missed out thus far to catch up via SVT Play. International readers should definitely keep an eye out for the series, because I would argue that chances are good that this will be exported. It is an excellent take on an alternate reality / near future, where hubots (i.e. humanoid robots) have become an integrated commodity on the market and in society, yet where both ideological resistance against machines replacing real humans and questions of what constitutes actual humanity and intelligence exist side by side, and in opposition to a smooth integration. Through make-up and superb acting, another reality is projected unto the screen and the result is quite possibly Swedish television's finest hour in a loooooong time.

However, fond as I am of the series after its first eight (out of ten) episodes, there is one thing that has started to bug me somewhat as the plot is slowly gaining its momentum: the nature of coincidence.

There is an old adage that knowingly states that there is no such thing as coincidence. While I am not necessarily ready to subscribe to such a notion completely (if for no other reason than the fact that we would have to define coincidence in a pretty precise fashion), I am willing to agree that there is not really any such thing as coincidence in a fictional plot.

Do not get me wrong: there is clearly a possibility of real world coincidences influencing authors or artists in their narrative choices (in film or television this would furthermore seem even more true as casting choices or even weather conditions on a shooting day might affect the finished product). However, that being said, the nature of plot itself is to create a believable sequence of events, or a mesh of intricate plot strands that unite in a complex yet unified story. Reality may very well be quite disorganised, but a narrative requires a certain sense of order, let us call it narrative logic, to be believable. This line of reasoning obviously resonates in the old Chekov quote about a gun on the wall in the first act of a play needing to be used in the second. In short, a reader will only tolerate so many red herrings, and even then they need to be relevant herrings.

As such, plot is its own enemy, because in trying to create this narrative logic and impose verisimilitude, it also runs the risk of violating the same verisimilitude it tries to achieve. We may not accept the disorganised chaos of reality as narrative proper, but nor do we accept the too neat narrative as real. And this is where coincidence becomes relevant.

Chekov's example above is good because it shows that stories should avoid being bogged down with needless things. Just because an author has a whole world at his disposal, it does not necessarily mean that going anywhere and everywhere in it is beneficial. In fact, and following Chekov's logic, authors need to restrain themselves and only go where their plot needs them to go. The trick is to follow that logic while masking its blatant intentionality.

If every piece and part of a narrative services the plot and the story, it needs to do so without calling attention to the plot or the story (unless it is a case of metafiction, where such a tactic may be suitable). What do I mean? Well, if coincidences are starting to stack up (e.g. chance meetings between characters, deus ex machina type scenarios where there are just enough guns on the relevant wall at the much needed time, etc), we as an audience are less likely to believe that they are coincidences, and we inevitably start sensing the intentionality of plot. It is not that we normally are entirely unaware of the fact that there is a plot, nor even that we do not look for it; it is more a case of a plot suddenly staring us in the face or in other ways calling attention to itself as a plot.

So why do I feel the urge to discuss this in connection with Äkta människor then? Well, the series and its creators have done a fine job of creating an alternative reality or near future, and do an impressive job selling it to the viewer. Verisimilitude is high in this series, to be sure. Yet then there is a nagging sensation, which grows the further into the story we go, that all of our characters (several, but still fairly limited) are interconnected on far too many levels. In this sense, it becomes less an interconnected weave á la Altman's Short Cuts or Haggis' Crash, and much more of an everyone crossing paths with everyone else. The effect, quite naturally, is the sensation of a shrinking fictional reality, where the intentionality of plot is starting to be visible at the seams.

Still, I would not want to end on too harsh a note, because (as stated) this really is SVT's finest hour in a long time. And it bodes well for the future of Swedish science fiction.

Acting or Writing Genius

There is an inherent problem in acting, or perhaps even more so writing, genius.

Don't get me wrong, it is not necessarily an easy task to successfully portray people of normal wits and intelligence. And it is certainly something of a challenge to portray stupid people; in particular in acting, where timing is of the essence to make it believable. The latter is actually one of the reasons why Christina Applegate's depiction of Kelly Bundy in Married with Children is an impressive feat. We utterly believe in Kelly's stupidity; to the extent where it would be easy to assume that Applegate shares this feature with her character. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. If she had been stupid, we would not have viewed Kelly as a stupid character, but rather as a character played (unsuccessfully) by a stupid actor. We recognise the asinine without a doubt, but we also recognise when something is out of synch with its context; in this case, the story. Stupid in synch equals brilliant portrayal of stupid character; stupid out of synch equals a poor portrayal by a stupid actor.

But I digress.

This post is not about the lower register (which it is still easier to bow down to), but the higher one, which remains ever elusive. As in all cases, fiction does not require being real, it requires seeming real. And therein lies the rub.

Acting or writing genius requires on the one hand to present the audience with an understandable entity; one which they can still comfortably understand as genius. On the other, it also requires that that understandable genius isn't transformed, as if by default, into a regular bloke. The balance is not easy and there are many examples of failure. Mostly, however, the failure does not consist of a too rigid depiction of the genius as actual genius. Perhaps this is because your normal actors and writers aren't actually geniuses themselves. Not even most of the more intellectual ones. And even if they were, chances are that they would ironically dumb down a genius character to make her or him relatable.

The other side of the coin is writing or acting upwards, telling your audience how brilliant your character is, only to stumble on the finish line by having the character absolutely clueless about something which they really ought not be clueless about. In TV shows, this is often shown by the genius character knowing little or nothing about any and all popular culture (Dr Sheldon Cooper obviously being a great exception to that rule). You only need to think about characters like Leroy Jethro Gibbs (NCIS) or Dr Temperance Brennan (Bones) who usually come off as super smart people, up until the point when a pop cultural reference appears. Because, as we all know, super smart people live entirely apart from the world, and can still stay up to date on the human condition, without ever taking in a single tabloid placard or zapping by anything pop cultural on TV. And after all, nothing of the kind would ever appear in a proper news show or newspaper either, so... Well, I guess you catch my drift.

So the trick is balance; to establish a level of genius you can sell, and without selling it short. And at the end of the day, it doesn't require genius. Only the skills to seem like one.

The Author – Creator or Creative Vessel?

I am currently teaching a creative writing class based on script doctor and story consultant John Truby's book The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller, and in one of our net meetings a discussion about this model of the writing process ensued. At the centre of the discussion was the fact that Truby continuously talk about the need to build an organic story, while presenting a model for doing this which can easily be viewed as very technical.

Now, first off, I would say in Truby's defence that there is a difference between an organic result (which comes across as cohesive and alive) and an organic method (which might be how one describes just going with the flow and making it up as you go along). The point here is that the reader or viewer wants an organic result, and more often than not, achieving that requires at least some sort of technique. Especially when committing to writing a lengthier work like a novel, film script or a play.

But even accepting that a lengthy piece of writing requires a solid structure, and that it, by definition, is easier to lay the foundation of a building first, this discussion nevertheless got me thinking about a deeper philosophical issue in how one thinks about the writing process.

On page 84, while discussing the need to start at the end (a sound structuring advice, in my humble opinion), Truby writes:

As with any journey, before you can take your first step, you have to know the endpoint of where you're going. Otherwise, you walk in circles or wander aimlessly.

Now, Truby's metaphor reveals an obvious philosophical vision, but interestingly enough it is not the only one possible to draw out of it. After all, while Truby focuses on reaching a destination, there are those who claim that it is the journey itself that matters, not what destination is reached.

In terms of narrative, I think Truby makes a good point, because narratives (whether fictional or factual) tend to attempt to bring a certain sense of order to our understanding of the world, our lives and our selves. Often even when they deceptively seem to attempt tearing order down. In fact, even when narratives try to mimic reality, they always resort to verisimilitude, attempting to be like reality or truth, rather actually be that thing.* Mostly because if it actually achieved being the thing itself, it would not necessarily make us believe it was.** So, for a story to be credible it needs to be structurally credible as a story. Whether or not it is credible in the sense of whether it could happen in the real world is actually less important. If for nothing else because we normally apply the same rules when relating the real world as well... as if to make that too more credible. Or perhaps just to make sense of its inherent chaos. But I digress.

There are probably as many ways of writing as there are writers. This is not to say that Truby's model and approach are bad, but like I tell my students: while I am there to teach them Truby's model and examine that they have understood it (in order for them to get their credits), what they choose to do with the model after that point is entirely up to them. Planning ahead and working things through on a basic level might save the writer a few (heavier) rewrites down the line, since there will always be a clear definition of where things are heading, and a greater focus on how they can get there. From a creative point of view, it might indeed be more enjoyable to just tag along for the ride, but it also raises the question of what one wants to do with the end product. And where one wants to put in the most work.

At the end of the day, however, the metaphor of the journey hints at a very basic question: are authors to be regarded as creators, in charge of their creation (i.e. the story world and all its inhabitants) or as creative vessels, through which the story world and its characters gain entrance into our reality? I do not suggest this as an either-or proposition. Many writers speak about their writing in a manner which suggests several intermediate states, but the poles are there to be sure.


* Needless to say perhaps, a narrative can never be reality or the truth in this sense, since there is always an imposed distance. Think of René Magritte's famous painting Ceci n'est pas une pipe, for instance, as an illustration of this.

** Dialogue is a good example here: in all writing (though in particular in script- and playwriting), dialogue needs to sound genuine and authentic, like something somebody would say, but at the same time very little fictional dialogue reads like people really speak. Speakers tend to stop, start new lines of thoughts mid-sentence, correct their thought-pattern, etc, all of which would be really inefficient in fiction where most lines have to count. In short, what is required is the illusion of actual speech rather than actual speech.

Once More with Verisimilitude

Some time ago now, I posted a piece in here entitled "To Seem or Not to Seem", in which I discussed the concept of verisimilitude. Recently while looking for an article by author Salman Rushdie, I came across Alison Flood's piece "Rushdie attacks Slumdog Millionaire's 'impossible' plot" on the Guardian's on-line books pages and was once more reminded of people's narrow-minded view of and failure to understand this concept.

Flood opens her brief piece on Rushdie's sharp critique of director Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionairewith the following statement:

You might think that a writer whose own characters have included telepaths and angels would not worry too much about a story's believability, but Salman Rushdie has taken serious issue with the credibility of this year's Oscars sensation Slumdog Millionaire.

The innate stupidity of this sentence makes me wince quite literally. Because obviously the inclusion of fantastical elements such as telepaths and angels need never be sold to the audience, right? Nor, of course, need authors (or directors or artists, etc) dealing which such elements bother with credibility or believability, right?

After all, clearly the potential audiences of such things buy anything coming their way. If they are ready to embrace a fantastical element as part of a fictional reality, clearly they have thrown all logic out the window, stopped caring and suspended all possible kinds of disbelief. I mean, why would anyone invest themselves in any way in something obviously not real, right? Something like, say, fiction.

To Seem or Not to Seem: On the Concept of Verisimilitude

In my last post ("A Not So Invisible Man: On H. G. Wells"), I briefly mentioned the term verisimilitude; a term I already brought up at the end of "Leaps of the Imagination" (posted way back in June), then promising to return to the term and the concept. And so, here we are.

Merriam-Webster's on-line dictionary traces the word verisimilitude back to circa 1576, etymologically stemming from the Latin verisimilitudo (in its turn from verisimilis verisimilar, from veri similis like the truth). The word is defined as:

1 : the quality or state of being verisimilar
2 : something verisimilar

Verisimilar then being defined as:

1 : having the appearance of truth : probable
2 : depicting realism (as in art or literature)

For obvious reasons, being that our topic relates to fiction (whether in the form of literature, comics or film), it seems appropriate to first turn to the notion of realism. Merriam-Webster defines realism as follows:

1 : concern for fact or reality and rejection of the impractical and visionary
2 a : a doctrine that universals exist outside the mind; specifically : the conception that an abstract term names an independent and unitary reality b : a theory that objects of sense perception or cognition exist independently of the mind — compare nominalism
3 : the theory or practice of fidelity in art and literature to nature or to real life and to accurate representation without idealization

For the purpose of our discussion here, it is obviously the third one that applies. What is important to note, is that the term itself has gone askew over the years. First because of the 19th century literary movement of realism (which still to this day, stylistically speaking, governs a great deal of the literary output to varying degrees), the existence of which makes it easy to assume that realism, at least in literature, does not exist outside of this time period or somewhat time specific genre. The second factor is the advent of the camera and its explosive impact on our perceptions in particular during the 20th century. With the camera (both photography and film, I might add) comes the notion of photorealism and the photo real; and together with the aforementioned 19th century literary genre, this leaves us with an understanding of realism as not merely pertaining to the real, but almost being the real itself; a perfect representation, as it were.

Here, however, is the rub, because as we can see in Merriam-Webster's definition, it is a "theory or practice of fidelity in art and literature to nature or to real life and to accurate representation without idealization" and as such it can never escape the layer of representation separating it from the real... whatever the "real" is.

Being representation, realism – more than anything else – is all about convention; about what we, as an audience, perceive to be real, truthful or, simply, realistic. This can be seen very clearly in the artistic development and handling of the film medium in the documentary genre, for instance. One of the reasons why documentaries held on to using black and white, and later grainier resolution, has do with using a visual that the audience perceived as depicting the truth, because precedents were laid out that made us trust these images more, simply because conventions had taught us that they were more strongly related to the real. Now, I think we can all agree that this is in fact convention and that neither black and white images nor grainier images actually are more realistic in the sense of pertaining to actual reality; or, more real, if you want.

This brings us back to the word of the day, that is verisimilitude. The Latin origin could be translated as "like the truth" and what is like the truth is not necessarily the truth. In short, verisimilitude has nothing to do with being actual truth or reality. Rather, as a convention, it is all about making something seem true or real. It is this which takes us into the territory where I've previously used the term; that is genres of the fantastic (e.g. fantasy, horror, science fiction and superheroes).

My first real encounter with the word itself (and an encounter that altered my own discourse on the subject, I might add) occurred some years ago. I was watching extra material on the DVD edition of Superman: The Movie and the word popped up. The director, Richard Donner, realised early on in the project that the main problem or challenge would be to convince the audience that Superman could fly. Don't get me wrong here, this is not a scientific question, not about explaining away the laws of gravity or whatever else. At the end of the day, it is about that age old concept of suspension of disbelief. Most (if not all) fiction relies upon that concept at some point or other, to some degree or another, because obviously a representation is never that which it represents (not even when that which it does represent is real; and let's remember that fiction problematises such notions even further by not necessarily representing or referring to an actual real event or occurrence).

Donner's film was presented with the slogan, "You'll Believe a Man Can Fly!" (i.e. the mantra the crew worked with throughout the production) and audiences did. Not because they were given lengthy explanations about how it worked, but because the film makers visually managed to sell the idea that a man could, in fact, fly. The audience suspended their disbelief and bought into this fantastical element of the fiction.

This is an approach that some films today would do well to remember (and that goes for some comics and literature as well). We sometimes seem to live in a world where the notion of verisimilitude is either all but forgotten or gravely misunderstood.

The former could arguably be seen in films (or fiction in other media) that do not seem to even make an effort in making us believe in the fictional world projected. Here we, for instance, find stories about vampires that throw all kinds of logic (narrative or otherwise) or credibility out the window, seemingly saying to the audience that "if you can suspend your disbelief to the extent of accepting vampires, well then I presume you'll swallow anything I offer, no matter what it is or how shoddily I attempt to sell it to you."

On the other hand, the grave misunderstanding of verisimilitude is no better, really. Here we have the over explainers, the people who in their pursuit of "realistic" depictions of the fantastic tries to go beyond selling it as like the truth or real, and find a way of explaining it as actually real, preferably in a scientific manner. The question being, do we really need to know (with great in-depth understanding) why the dragon can breathe fire or how Superman can fly? Do we? Really?

Suspension of disbelief requires that we can accept that what is happening on the screen or page is happening within the confines of the fictional universe at hand. It is the question of accepting the fictional fantastic as believable, as like truth (rather than as true) and move on from there. Over explaining things rarely helps to sell what is essentially an illusion to begin with. After all, how many people actually knows how an aeroplane works and flies? How many people knows in great details how a computer functions for that matter?

And before someone cries "I know" – I'd like to quickly add; that's not the issue. Sure, there are people who know these things (obviously). But my point is that far, far from everyone in the general public does. Yet this does not make them express disbelief in either aeroplanes or computers. And, for the record, aeroplanes and computers were merely two examples from a list that could go on and on and on. We live in a reality most of us know fairly little about on a multitude of levels and with regards to a multitude of functions. Yet we do not disbelieve in all of these things, despite the fact that we might not know or understand the how or the why of it.

An over explanation of a fantastic element is often more likely to reveal flaws in logic and presentation, ultimately rendering the over explanation counter-productive. The more you tie a fantastic phenomenon into a scientific explanation, the more you depend on that scientific model to hold and to in itself contain verisimilitude. Because here is another rub: that which is true needs not always seem like truth. This is why more realistic stories (in a traditional sense) can fail in depicting things that are actually true or real. Because verisimilitude is not a question of being or not being real. It is a question of seeming real, of seeming true.

And when it comes that question... well, then what actually is, is much less important. After all, we tend to believe in that which seems real.

Leaps of the Imagination

Apologies for the slight delay in posting this. The Midsummer weekend (which is a time of celebration here in Sweden) simply came in between, but now I am back in the proverbial saddle.

Having recently written of how SF (and indeed all literature) is, as it were, a victim of its own time in my previous post entitled "Visions of the Future Are Always Anchored in the Past and the Present", I figured it might be appropriate to write a few words on the subject of why, perhaps, certain SF indeed does succeed in some of its predictions (despite of its failure to accomplish a complete prophetic vision).

I remember watching a documentary program called Cyberpunk on Swedish television back in the early 90s. Truth to tell, I believe I still have the program somewhere on a VHS tape since I recorded it and viewed it at least a few more times. The most interesting aspect of the program (filled as it was with editing effects of various kinds and some rather frightening people waiting to be jacked into their computers for good) was the included interview material with William Gibson, who is one of the founding fathers (if not THE founding father) of the cyberpunk genre.

One of the things that has really stuck with me from those interview bits, was Gibson's confession that his first novels were all written on typewriter, contrary to what one might easily believe. In fact, Gibson tells an anecdote about getting himself a computer around the time of (if I remember correctly) writing Mona Lisa Overdrive (i.e. the third novel in his Cyberspace trilogy). The account is amusing as it reveals Gibson, who already at this point had made a name for himself among computer people, to be fairly unaware of how a computer actually works, even in the most rudimentary fashion. He relates to his audience how he brought the computer home, turned it on and got worried from hearing a whining kind of sound. Because of this he nervously called the store and told them that the computer was making this noise, whereupon the person in the other end responded something like, "that, sir, is the sound of your hard drive." Gibson laughs after revealing this to the audience and admits that he'd never really considered the inner workings of the computer as a machine. Yet all in all, he had expected it to be more sophisticated somehow; liquid crystals or some such thing.

Yet, I think that there is something revealing about this revelation (and not only in the most obvious sense). It, in fact, suggests an explanation as to how SF as a genre might accurately predict certain things which might not have been predicted through the application of scientific data and pure logic. I would suggest that there are occasions when fiction has a much stronger capability of predicting something than pure factually based accounts do. I am, of course, talking about leaps of the imagination.

Don't get me wrong. There are plenty of good SF writers out there who are very grounded in the science of our own time, and who are making excellent use of that knowledge to generate their own credible future worlds. Yet even these writers need to rely on said leaps to get where they want to go often-times. As SF writer Arthur C. Clarke has been known to say on more than one occasion (in fact, I've heard him say so in few interview snippets myself), sufficiently advanced technology would seem like magic to a technologically lesser advanced society or individual. To get past one's own less advanced position and mine those future technological possibilities in some manner of speaking would, to my mind, require said leaps of imagination.

Now the interesting thing is that these leaps seem very much to actually help our technological advancement. While we undeniably need hard science to define our possibilities, it strikes me that at times we also need leaps of imagination to break out of what we know to be possible (or in fact, perhaps more importantly, impossible). It is matter of looking at the world with fresh, unburdened eyes, and while such eyes certainly cannot alter the laws of physics, it might be that they can occasionally unlock new potential understandings of these laws for someone who knows them, but who is also blinded from seeing new potentials by the known limitations of the laws.

All of this being a (perhaps) circuitous way of saying that ignorant points of view, on occasion, can help the knowledgeable to review their own knowledge from another perspective; i.e. to view existing data in a manner not previously thought of and which the data itself might actually make it nigh impossible to see.

As for the fictional universes themselves, as always, real world limitations mean nothing. Verisimilitude is the key. The word, derived from the verisimilar, refers to something having the appearance of truth, which is more than a few steps away from portraying any kind of actual truth or reality (if that, in the strictest sense, is even remotely possible). As such, there can be few genres to which verisimilitude is more important than those of the fantastic, like SF, fantasy and horror. But that, ladies and gentlemen, strikes me as a different subject than the one at hand, although one which I am more than certain we will have reason to return to in future posts.