Can someone break this down for me? I’ve read explanations and I’m not grasping it. An example would be great. Cheers y’all
In: 1945
In the purest form, a deus ex machina is an event or character who appears and resolves the conflict of the story without any prior notice or foreshadowing. It is often used more generally to apply to any conflict rather than just the main conflict.
So if you have a story about a character who is in need of money, and at the end the character receives enough money from a source never mentioned previously, then that would be a deus ex machina.
However if the story had a second viewpoint character who had spent the whole time trying to find the first character in order to give them the money, that wouldn’t be a deus ex machina because the reader would have prior notice of how the story might be resolved.
On the other hand if one of those characters was being mugged in an alley and a new character shows up and saves them, that isn’t strictly speaking a deus ex machina because the main conflict of the story wasn’t resolved. Also if something unexpected helps the antagonists or hinders the protagonists, that also isn’t a deus ex machina because it doesn’t resolve the main conflict (in fact it makes the conflict worse). Both of these can still be unsatisfying for the reader if done badly.
Latest Answers