Deus ex machina. It’s a device we’ve all heard about from Ancient Greek theatre where a god was delivered by a machine, sometimes quite literally, to solve the problems of the players on stage. The famous example is when Medea needed to escape, the sun god Helios sends a chariot to save her. It wasn’t part of a subplot. It wasn’t something that grew out of lack of ideas. It was a device to bring a conclusion t a difficult position of the characters… and the playwright.
Even thousands of years ago, it wasn’t without its detractors.
Aristotle criticised the device in Poetics – “It is obvious that the solutions of plots, too, should come about as a result of the plot itself, and not from a contrivance…” Antiphanes wrote – “when they don't know what to say/and have completely given up on the play/just like a finger they lift the machine/and the spectators are satisfied.”
The device could be useful to create a certain feeling or reaction to the ending. In Ancient Greece it is said to have inspired awe and reverence for the Gods. That would be the goal for some dramas. In the Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading it creates a feeling of absurdity and overall helplessness.
But if this feeling isn’t what you’re going for, then it’s not helpful at all. Dig deeper into your characters, your story, your material, and bring up something that brings value to the end of your story.
Often deus ex machina is seen as a lack of creativity. The writer has struggled to find a suitable ending and so brought something outside the story to tie it all up. It’s unsatisfying to those invested in what has happened, invested themselves in the characters and their journey.
These days it’s not just the ending. Now there is ideae ex machina. With a simple prompt you can have some words sent to you, all arranged in a way that might be a suitable idea. It still lacks creativity. It lacks insight.
We’ve all been taught how to write in school, but deep writing and long form writing is hard. That is the point of it – if you want people to invest time in reading a book you have written, listening to an album you’ve recorded, or any other creative act then you have to invest the time in creating it. Don’t draw your inspiration from a machine.
Writing is difficult. But there are other ways. There are people – yes, like me – who have done it. We’ve seen the pitfalls. We know the difficult moments, the obstacles. We know how to develop an idea or reshape it, reorder it so it will fit with a larger story. We know strategies to get around creative block.
Collaboration with a writing coach or a ghostwriter makes the journey easier. Sometimes a guiding word, sometimes deep creative collaboration. But this is the process. It is what makes your work worth reading and, hopefully, a book that people recommend to others then return to for inspiration in the years ahead.
Come – join the band of storytellers over the millennia. We want to hear what you have to say, to share your insight in the human condition. The stage is yours.