NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES
Don't Be Tempted by the Evil God Who Destroys the Credibility of Your Story
Avoid improbable expedients to end your story — The "Deus Ex Machina" Lesson
You are reading the last chapters of the novel.
You are in suspense because the protagonist is in a dead-end, with no possibility of escape. The enemy has an ax in his hand and is about to hit him. Then suddenly, the enemy falls to the ground because an alien appears and hits him with a laser beam.
You close the book since the story is not about aliens, and you haven't seen any aliens up to that point. If you could, you’d throw the book out the window.
The alien in question has the narrative function of Deus ex machina.
Deus ex machina: what does it mean?
We often read this particular term but do you know its real meaning? It is an ancient Latin expression, which literally means "god from the machine".
This term derives from the Greek tragedy. It concerned when a character came on the scene at the end of the narration to solve a situation that initially seemed very difficult to overcome or even without a solution.
