In Saving Private Ryan, the cavalry (P51’s) appeared fortuitously, out of thin air so to speak.
Or a magician falls off a tower, but a huge bat-thing comes out of nowhere and rescues him?
Just to follow up Reality Chuck’s post, my understanding is similar… say the book is about a little girl and her horse, and is written like a diary of any little girl in the real world who has a horse. Towards the end there’s a threat to the horse and the little girl is set to lose him, and as the book is drawing to a close, their parting is imminent - when suddenly a fairy godmother appears and waves her wand, and the girl and her horse live happily together ever after. If the whole book has been set in a real world type scenario, and there’s been no mention of magic or the possibility of magic or the existance of fairy godmothers, and the book seems to have leapt out of our dimension and into another, then that’s deus ex machina. It’s a twist of the realm of possibility - you need to let your audience know what is possible and what isn’t before suddenly springing a fairy godmother on them at the very end of the book.
Right, provided we don’t specifically see the magician sending an enchanted moth or some other means of signal for a rescue.
Geez, even I got that, and I’m slow as a brick.
Heh. Anyone seen A.I. lately? If nobody has coined the phrase “plot-pun” yet, I think we might have to do it now.
Scene One: Terrorists blow up buildings with airplanes, kill thousands, linked to Jolly Old Tallybahn
Scene Two: Leader of the Phree Whirled attacks the Tallybahn hideout in Topeka, Djibouti with tons and tons of twinkies.
Scene Three: Headmen of the Tallybahn ask their god why they have been forsaken and ask for forgiveness.
Scene Four: Leader of the Phree Whirled chokes on a pretzel. There is much glee and merriment among Tallybahn
I’d just like to add that I don’t condone blowing up buildings with airplanes, twinkie bombing or invoking deities with a penchant for pretzel torture.
…and then, everyone on the SDMB gets hit by a bus.