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An Entity of Type : owl:Thing, within Data Space : 134.155.108.49:8890 associated with source dataset(s)

Most stories are fairly predictable to at least some degree. You meet the characters, and you may not know who is important, but you know they are in some way. You see locations and items that you just know are going to be an important part of the plot. And there's a degree of excitement in knowing that something cool looking is going to somehow be used later on. In Poetics, Aristotle denounced the "episodic" as the worst of all plots, where there is neither probability nor necessity in the sequence of events, so bungling it has been around a while.

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  • Random Events Plot
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  • Most stories are fairly predictable to at least some degree. You meet the characters, and you may not know who is important, but you know they are in some way. You see locations and items that you just know are going to be an important part of the plot. And there's a degree of excitement in knowing that something cool looking is going to somehow be used later on. In Poetics, Aristotle denounced the "episodic" as the worst of all plots, where there is neither probability nor necessity in the sequence of events, so bungling it has been around a while.
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  • Most stories are fairly predictable to at least some degree. You meet the characters, and you may not know who is important, but you know they are in some way. You see locations and items that you just know are going to be an important part of the plot. And there's a degree of excitement in knowing that something cool looking is going to somehow be used later on. But some stories are not like that. In some stories, you have no way of knowing what's going to happen, largely because it comes out of nowhere. And the next plot event also comes out of nowhere. And so on - without being set up or having any sort of logical lead-up from previous events. The characters primarily exist to react to whatever the writer throws their way. When this happens, it's a Random Events Plot. Randomness is something that happens every day in Real Life. Many things happen for a reason, but a lot of them don't. Again for no reason at all. Despite the occurence of random things in real life it is not always appreciated in fictional works. Audiences automatically search for reasons for someone's behaviour. If things just happen without any logical explanation or build up events can come across as a product of Lame Writing or being absurd for the sake of being absurd. Comedies do this all the time, as the Rule of Funny means that they don't have to make sense. Video games often do it as well, thanks to the Rule of Fun. When non-comedic works of fiction do this, however, it can be quite jarring. How well they pull it off and how enjoyable they manage to be often has to do with the execution of the story. If it's good, then the story may be random, but at least it's the fun kind of random, rather than the confusing, annoying kind of random. Artsy works can showcase random scenes to show we live in a World of Symbolism. It's up to the audience to find the hidden meanings. Exploitation works or low level art (pulp novels, Exploitation Film,...) just randomly add cheap thrills like violence, shock, sex, action, gags, Product Placement,... because the creators want to make a quick buck without bothering too much about the story. Most of them the time the audience will notice and Suspension of Disbelief might occur. But when in the right mood or with the right audience they will enjoy these random scenes because they provide them with the cheap thrills they would like to encounter in the story. Or they enjoy the Anything Goes atmosphere. In Poetics, Aristotle denounced the "episodic" as the worst of all plots, where there is neither probability nor necessity in the sequence of events, so bungling it has been around a while. See Also: Halfway Plot Switch, Shaggy Dog Story.
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