Flip A Coin

On occasion, I have talked about the importance or being unpredictable. Writers should avoid predictable situations that have a limited number of outcomes and break unwritten rules to gain access to more possibilities than we usually think of.

With advice like this, it is easy to take it too far. For example, an unwritten rule is that the lower the odds of success, the more likely the hero is to succeed. Now, it is one thing to make a hero fail on occasion, but if you make the hero fail all the time, then you are still being predictable.

I am a fan of true randomness or chaos. If my story introduces a character on the first page, I don't want the audience to know if that character is a hero or a villain. I don't want them to know if that character will survive the whole book or die on page three. In essence, it should be a coin flip.

In fact, flipping a coin would be an interesting technique. Start writing a story. When you reach a fork in the road, assign each possibility an outcome. Flip a coin or throw a die and whatever it says, you make happen. From there, continue the story. When you reach another fork, repeat the process. This method will allow some real randomness, but still require your creativity to come up with the possibilities and write them in an interesting way.

Give chaos a shot. It could make for the best thing you've ever written. It could also make a steaming pile of garbage. That's just the nature of chaos.