Everything happens for a reason. That maxim applies to most works of fiction.
In a novel randomness is chaos, it is insignificant. It is pointless. Coincidence must be synchronicity.
Maybe I am not unusual in hating happenstance when it’s not obviously good luck. But for me it’s also about fear. Most creative writers yearn to harness the chaos of the universe into something with meaning. Being able to have total control over a (an invented) reality is our raison d’être.
But life is random, stuff happens that you can never have prevented. Yet I am often trying to process these random-chance occurrences into something significant. With what I took to be an extremely unlikely event, I was thinking: the chances of that horse rider approaching the roadside from a residential drive – only just as I walked past – were minimal. But the chances of the horse throwing her off… well, I was stunned for a few seconds before I could ask her if she was OK. Thankfully she was (or so she told me). I had the strange nonsensical thought: This is not the day (Boxing day) when bad things are supposed to happen. But my being there has caused it. Then soon after I’d walked off I wondered: was I meant to encounter her? Was it fate? She seemed near my age. Could I have got her number? It wouldn’t have seemed odd given the circumstance; after such a nasty fall, I was naturally concerned to know if she really would be OK later on.
So I do have trouble accepting randomness, rather than just believing enough information would make the future predictable. I’m going to have to face the fear of letting my book go, without any real knowledge of its likely success. Who knows what events will influence those that matter? Will they read my submission when having a bad day? An unusually busy day? There is so much that I know I cannot control or predict. So I’ve got accept that after all: luck really is important!
Links to my fiction: The Captured (US) The Captured (UK)
The Trials of Writing & Publishing 