When I took the Creative Writing IV course years ago for my Malay Literature Studies, our professor taught us the elements of the novel. He advised us to create realistic plots so that your characters can think and act as credible as people do in real life. Otherwise he advised, you will end up pigeonholing your characters and he/she will be unable to extricate themselves of the situation(s), problem(s) or dilemmas they are confronted and you will end up using deus ex machina to rescue them. He said “if I encounter this in your fiction, I will give you a big fat F!”
In hindsight, I think he probably just want to scare the heck out of us and when I started to write my first novel for the course, as a requirement, he surely did. I learned how difficult it is to craft a story with a believable plot without getting entangled with coincidences. I wanted the story to have a happy ending, but due to my lack of experience in how to twist and turn the plot like a pro, I ended-up creating the plot where the main protagonist walks out without a solution. Thank God, he didn’t give me an F!
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