What Are The Odds?

In my last post, I ended up talking about a concept, but didn't directly speak to its writing application.  Since the goal of this blog is to discuss writing (often pulling examples from real life), I want to rectify that.

A lot of things happen to us that ended up being insignificant.  A baseball went whizzing right in front of your face.  You dropped a knife while peeling an apple.  You fell backwards out of your chair.  In all of those situations, a difference of an inch could have permanently changed the rest of your life.  You could be in a coma, missing a toe, or be dead.  But instead, it was kind of a nonevent.

When something like that does happen to you, you ask yourself, what are the odds?  What are the odds that something horrible happened to you?  Well, the odds that a small ball and your head happened to be in the same path at the same time?  Pretty low.  But these things seem to happen a lot.  And the more often these situations occur, the more chances there are for a catastrophe to result.

In a story, long shots are often met with a scoff.  In fiction, odds are meaningless.  The less likely something is to occur, the surer you can be that it will.  If something has a 50/50 chance, the result will always be the one with the more interesting result.

Close calls and long shots are both tricky in story telling.  If you do either of them too much, they become stale (and it doesn't take a lot).  If the main character has Hero Immunity, no close call will ever be impressive, nor will a long shot.

Try writing an open-ended story.  When you have a situation with surprising odds, pick the one you want to write.  Then flip a coin.  If it's tails, do the opposite.  Allow the story to fly wildly out of control.  That's life.  It is a series of events, each one based on the results of the previous ones, but the outcome never being guaranteed.  Allow something wonderful to happen.  Allow something horrible to happen.  Allow events to become nonevents.  Then show it to somebody.  They may just say, "there, but for the grace of god, go I."