An Imaginative Plot Twist or "Cheating?"

Ok, I used that word "cheating" mainly to get your attention. There is no such thing as cheating in fiction, right? Anything goes. But then again ...

Writers often have trouble with plots. They develop a scenario and then, for one reason or another, can't figure out how to resolve it -- how to bring matters to a conclusion, or in the case of many short stories, to a satisfactory finish since conclusions aren't all that common.


This problem has been with us throughout recorded history and the Greeks invented what became perhaps the classic method of dealing with it: deus ex machina, to use the familiar Latin translation, or god from a machine. A god suddenly appears on stage and sets matters straight.

"The term has evolved to mean a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved by the inspired and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability or object. Depending on how it is done, it can be intended to allow a story to continue when the writer has 'painted himself into a corner' and sees no other way out, to surprise the audience, to bring the tale to a happy ending, or as a comedic device." So says Wikipedia.

I mention this because Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum resorted to something very much akin to this device in "The Burglar," a short story recently published in The New Yorker.

In an author interview, Bynum discusses how she couldn't resolve her story with the three characters -- a husband, his wife and a young black man (the burgler) she had so far developed. Additional points of view were needed. But instead of coming up with a new character who would logically be part of the scene, she grabbed a figure central to the husband's TV program work effort, and brought him into the story through what was called "a rift in the space-time continuum."

One can greet that with approbation -- as The New Yorker did -- or think "well, that was an easy way out," and not all that satisfying especially since readers need to pay close attention to follow Ms Bynum's piece. Think of a series of short ceramic tiles of mostly repeating colors. Each tile tells what's happening to a different character at a particular point in time in what is described as "a web of simultaneous events."

I liked the style even though to read it was time consuming. But after putting in the effort, I didn't care much for the god-in-machine resolution.

Was it the moral equivalent of cheating? Read the story and see what you think.

My bottom line: The New Yorker  should have sent Bynum home to do another draft.