Contrived! No Writer Wants to Hear That Word

Dear Aspiring Author,

Thank you for submitting your paranormal book proposal to us Although I enjoyed your writing, the plot seemed a little too contrived. 

Sincerely yours,

Alicia Agent

Contrived: create or bring about a situation by deliberate use of skill and artifice.

I’ve been watching Shadow and Bone, a fantasy series on Netflick adapted from the Shadow and Bone novels by Leigh Bardugo. Characters from a second series she wrote called The Crow have been interwoven into the storyline.

To be honest, while I read all the Shadow and Bone books, I only read the first book of the Crow series as it didn’t appeal to me as much. In the TV series, the writers take a lot of liberties and co-mingled the two story lines.

In the second season, the Crows (a merry band of thieves) are tasked with buying or stealing an antique sword. As the scenes dedicated to this endeavor unfold, it’s difficult to believe this is a seasoned band of thieves.

Now, I’m not a thief, but one would think the first step of thievery is to recon the target and its environs. Instead, our merry band show up at the front door, break the lock on the door, and stumble inside. There is a brief “working out their problems” with two of the characters as the others traipse into the courtyard of the house.

By the way, the house is owned by an antiques dealer who deals in rare and expensive items. But there doesn’t seem to be any types of security, human, animal, or mechanical.

Nor do any of the merry band question the ease of their task so far.

As they traverse deeper into the house, they enter a room and finally trigger a system that locks all the exits and then expels some type of gas into the room that knocks them all out.

I’m thinking, about time these bumbling nincompoops got caught!

I also thought: that scene gave new meaning to the word “contrived.” It was one of the worst “walk into a trap” scenes I’ve ever watched.

It made me a little angry, because whoever wrote that scene had no real respect for the audience. It was a trite piece of writing that made the story characters look dumber than dirt and that wasn’t fair to the actors or the author’s well-written story.

As you write your stories, remember you want the story to grow organically from the characters you have created. Contriving a situation to achieve a goal isn’t fair to the reader. If you have a band of seasoned, professional thieves, then they must act like professional thieves who have experience in what they’re doing.