The collected musings of Ryan Elder

true. Mixed up defense with prosecutor.

If you want to stay close to reality its good to have all the nitty gritty details written down in depth, however it may be really boring reading if you have to explain all of that in the story / just out of curiosity, who's the intended audience of the story?

 

As for new and age tech. Look into "dark web" technology. Perhaps you can find something in there to solidify your online treasure trove.

 

What the heck is a 'Macguffin?' I don't understand the definitions I found on Google.

 

Oooooo-kay.

 

Well the antagonist already has gang members working for him who are experts with computer crimes, since the story is largely based on computer crimes. So would the antagonist have the blackmail evidence on his computer, in cyberspace, knowing that his own men are computer experts, and could maybe find them and delete them, if they wanted to? Or therefore, would he keep it on hard copy somewhere, since his men are computer crime experts?'

As for the MC finding out, basically the way I wrote it, was that the MC has the antagonist tapped for audio and is recording his conversations (illegally), and he records the antagonist having a conversation with his lawyer, about the blackmail evidence he has on everyone in case they turn on him.

So the MC finds out that way, by listening in, electronically, on the private conversation, without the antagonist knowing.

 

I was thinking about it though... What if I wrote it so that he has all the blood in videos kept on computer, and that the MC gets into his computer, and then tricks the the computer system, to email all of the blood in videos to the police? Is that better?

 

Sometimes when it comes to studying plot structure in thrillers, I find that when you're protagonist is filled with so many obstacles (some even unintended, and they just happened), that you have to have a back door ready in advance for him/her to be able to escape out of.

However, sometimes I feel it may be a deux ex machina to have one. Like for example, in the movie No Way Out (1987), the protagonist is framed for murder, and has to find some way to clear his name. Just when he thinks it's all over for him and there is nothing he can do, one of the investigators comes up to him with a piece of evidence that could clear his name, and the evidence was not discovered before, because it accidentally fell under the seat of the investigator's car, and it was therefore missed, for the plot until then.

Basically a piece of evidence or a flaw, has to be missed and not rediscovered until later, but does the fact that it gets missed count as a deux ex machina, especially if it is lost by accident, but then found again later, such as the case of it falling under a car seat? What do you think?

 

If the evidence in your example was never seen or mentioned before, and there was no follow up stuff, then a Deus ex machina is exactly what I'd call it.
If it were previously mentioned and/or there were some action that needed to be taken to use it, less so.

For example; if we see the chief lose the document containing the MC's alibi, say, before he needs it, and when it's found, the MC still has to prove that it's genuine, it's more palatable.
Maybe still not the best writing, but its better.

 

I agree with @NiallRoach that it's not technically a deus ex machina, but you have to be careful to avoid having it seem as such. When it comes back up, the reader needs to remember having seen it before. I've read some books that used a host of red herrings with the "real" solution hidden among them, but to the point where the real solution seemed like a deus ex due to all the noise surrounding it. Don't remember much about the story, but The Execution Channel by Ken MacLeod struck me that way. I know he's very well regarded, but I just remember thinking "Where the hell did that come from?" when the Big Reveal happened.

It's a tough balancing act, good luck.

 

It gets lost and then found = Deus ex machina

It gets overlooked in the huge pile of evidence until the MC orders his trusty sidekick to go through it all again ("we must have missed something"), and the sidekick spots the importance of it because he just spilled his coffee over it at three in the morning = OK...especially if he foreshadows it by, earlier, joking "what we need is a YouTube video", and the evidence is a hint to where you can find some security footage...or something like that.

 

The key to avoiding pissing your reader off is earning your victories. Your MCs should bleed, metaphorically maybe, for that resolution.
D.E.Ms are a problem because they don't bleed for a god to appear and magic their problems away; they didn't earn it. If they pore over ten thousand pages of cryptic Old Faroese dróttkvæt verse, piecing the solution together by reconstructing the missing lines through their own knowledge of kennings, we need an iamb here that alliterates with 'sverðinu Ívars hínar Beinlausa', until they crack it and discover the true nature of said warlord's disability which leads them to publish a revolutionary paper that rockets them to stardom and gets them the lady friend of their preference, then you're safe.

If he trips over a fallen runestone that tells him what he wants to know halfway through act 3, you're not quite so safe.

 

Okay thanks. Another possible Deux ex machina was in the movie The Departed, where Leonardo Dicaprio's character is painted into a corner, and you wonder how he is going to get out of the dangerous predicament he is in and then...

SPOILER

A man who was never seen before in the movie calls him, and gives him the bargaining chip he needs to get out of the predicament. Are audiences/readers bothered by deux ex machinas in that case, if it is a popular work, like that movie?

What if instead of missing the evidence the MC has a theory that the evidence may be out there, so he sets out to find it, to see if his theory is correct... how do you write it in a way, in which the readers don't roll their eyes thinking, how convenient that the theory turns out to be right, and the problem is solved, the end? Can that be a deux ex machina too, if the reader is thinking, how convenient that the theory turned out to be correct?

 

I haven't seen The Departed so I can't really comment, but I'd assume there are some mitigating factors.
As for how to avoid eye rolling at the MC's theory being correct... Have it not be correct? Have him fail and fail and then succeed. Ease is boring, so don't let it be easy.

ETA: You're writing this gang novel, right? With the videotaped murders and blackmail and such. Maybe PC Plod gets the idea that the bad guys are based out of a hostel that's secretly a money laundering scheme, so he stakes it out and spends a week watching from the nearby McDonalds. He's wrong, and his boss/captain/detective superintendent gives him a right bollocking for chasing the lead and his reputation is scuffed amongst his colleagues. Then he catches another whiff, but he's more careful about acting on it, until he's dead certain, and he battles with the boss to get the resources to check it out and yes boss this is real, but he's wrong again and he gets chucked out on his arse. So now he's off the case and a laughing stock in the station and he whinges for a chapter until he grits his teeth and goes for it again. Maybe his wife is sick of him holding onto the bloody case and changes the locks because he's being self destructive and he acts on this final lead with nothing to lose and THEN he's right and has the big showdown with the baddies and happy ever after.

That's the kind of structure you'd expect to see. It's far from original, but you've got him bleeding for his victory, you've got stakes in that if he's wrong he's git no wife or job or mates to go back to, and you've got a nice three beat plot that fits with the traditional three act structure.

 

I'd say simply, if the solution to the dilemma is planted earlier in the story, then it's not Deus Ex Machina. (God or Coincidence appears at just the right moment and sorts everything out.)

A writer needs to plant the solution early in the story, but not give the game away. The reader's reaction at the end should be, 'Wow, oh, of COURSE, why didn't I see that?' Not, 'WTF?' Or, 'I saw that coming ages ago.'

It's tricky, and there is no formula. Hiding the possibility in plain sight is the key.

The clue has got to register with the reader If you just mention something and the reader doesn't notice or remember it, that doesn't work very well. You can say, 'But I mentioned there were six people on the bus, back in Chapter One,' but if that fact is buried in lots of other irrelevant detail and never mentioned again, it doesn't stick. People must see the clue and remember it, but not make the connection until the end.

 

Okay thanks. I haven't read that book, so I can't comment.

Yes it is the story with the videos, or at least that is the idea I am going with so far. The MC knows of one of the videos that is being used as leverage on one of the gang members, but I need to him discover that there are more, but the simplest way for him to do that would be to theorize that there is more, and that they are all being kept in the same place, but is that too much of a theory for the MC to risk his life on?

As for having the MC being wrong, well at this point in the story, the story has to end, so I want the MC to be right. If he is wrong, then I will just have to come up with a whole new third act, where as I want this to be the third act, if that works, and is not seen as too convenient, that he's right.

 

History time!
'Deus Ex Machina' is a Greek phrase that literally translates to 'God from the machine', and refers to an old trope that was used in Greek plays. Namely, when a hero was written into a corner and the author didn't know how to get them out of the situation, they would sometimes just have a god show up out of nowhere and fix the problem or give the hero a solution. Whenever actors portraying gods were used, they were lowered on ropes so at to appear to be coming from the heavens, which is where 'The machine' came in.

Why does that matter? Because most things accused of being 'Ex machinas' really aren't. Even if we don't take the name literally, the concept refers to a fix coming to the hero that they did not work for, and that the audience did not know existed or was relevant. (There's also 'Diablo ex Machina', for when something bad happens for no real reason other than the plot demanding it, with no foreshadowing or common sense behind it.) If it's foreshadowed - Even a little bit - It's not Deus Ex Machina.

One of my favorite examples of something that looks like DEM is from True Grit. It's coming on the end of the book, and - Seemingly out of nowhere - Maddie Ross, the protagonist, just stumbles upon Tom Chaney (the man she's been looking for the whole book) while she's getting a bucket of water. It seems like it comes completely out of the blue, but it's later pointed out that it wasn't a coincidence at all - Her guide was drunk, and rather than leading them to an area *near* the bandit's hideout like he'd intended, he'd gone to far and ended up leading them almost right into the hideout. (Immediately following this, there's a Diablo-ex-machina that really isn't too. Her gun misfires, twice, and it seems like pure bad luck - Until you're reminded of one of the earliest chapters in the book, where the same drunk guide who led them astray used her gun to shoot a rat, and then loaded two rounds back into the pistol.)

 

Yeah. There's that old saying that a coincidence can start a story. "Of all the gin joints in all the world, she had to walk into mine." But it should NEVER be used to resolve the story's problems.

 

The question is not if he's wrong this time, it's if he's been wrong before. If this is the first thought to pop into his head, and it's right, we might be leery about it.

 

Oh okay. Well it's the first thought to pop into his head when he hears about the one video. Then he hopes there will be more. So he thinks of it, when he hears about the video. Is that too soon, or too easy, since he's right?

 

Maybe, maybe not. Again, it just needs to not be easy. How long does it take for him to get the other videos? If that's the main thrust of the novel through the second act, then you can get away with it being a little easer in his getting to that idea.
This stuff isn't about content, though, it's about execution. We would need to read it to really say much worth saying.

 

Okay thanks, I'll have to write more of it out, once I figure it out. He finds out about the videos near the end of the second act, or at least will have an obsessed theory that they exist... He would then get the videos in the third act, at least that is what I have outlined so far.

You say don't make it easy, but nothing can go wrong in finding the videos, otherwise they won't be found. So by definition of not having anything go wrong, does that in itself count as easy?