What is Deus Ex Machina?! & How to use it in Your Stories
“This event, where your character is saved by the Almighty Himself through whatever means He chooses, is called ‘Deus Ex Machina,’ Latin for ‘God in the Machine,’ and has its place, as with all storytelling devices, but rarely as the final solution to your story.”
Imagine with me, for a moment, this movie:
A young man has spent his entire young adult life in gangs. In his day-to-day, he finds a girl, a bit more straight-laced than he, and the early buds of romance appear. One night, he pulls a hit on a new district attorney who came to town trying to make a difference. Though sympathetic to the man’s ideals, the power structure of this town has been entrenched for far too long, and the DA has to go. Low-and-behold, the DA was the father of the young woman whom our main character has been seeing. The woman takes it upon herself to find her father’s killer and asks our main character to help her.
For the next two hours, you sit anxiously at the edge of your seat as a masterful game of Cat and Mouse is played between these two lovers as they uncover the deep-seated corruption in this forgotten city and, together, do more than the deceased DA could have ever done. As they do, you laugh, you cry, you bite your nails!
Finally, at the end of it all, the truth comes out. She uncovers who killed her father and, barely containing her heartbreak and rage, awaits his confession. Outcome be damned, the moral question for our main character is, “Will he come clean to the woman he loves or doom himself to a life of lies?” Our hero, or at least the main character, chooses the former. He sits with his lover and confesses. Her rage gets the better of her; she pulls a gun on him, but before she can pull the trigger, an angel descends upon the scene and stops her. She puts down the gun and starts to weep. He holds her. Fade to black.
This is a wonderful example of Deus Ex Machina executed terribly. Here’s why.
God is present in everything. This is especially true for stories, as stories reflect the natural world and the natural world points to the spiritual one. However, few things are less satisfying than watching a main character struggle against an antagonistic force, only to be saved by some random occurrence of nature, an unknown character, or a poorly executed literal manifestation of God rather than overcome. Yet, very often, we see this exact story play out at the hands of naïve, or dare I say lazy, writers, just like in the theoretical film described above.
This event, where your character is saved by the Almighty Himself through whatever means He chooses, is called “Deus Ex Machina,” Latin for “God in the Machine,” and has its place, as with all storytelling devices, but rarely as the final solution to your story.
Rather, Deus Ex Machina works best when manifested as a character. Not only is this easier to swallow as an audience than random occurrences in nature, but it gives something personable for your hero to react to. The character even has a well-established archetype: The Force of Nature.
Force of Nature characters are defined by their unpredictable nature. They show up randomly, usually at the most inopportune times, and rather than solve problems, they typically complicate the plot.
Talented writers love complications in their stories because they know that the complications, the struggles, are what get the audience invested in their journey.
The other option when using Deus Ex Machina, specifically for a climactic finale, is to use the presence of God to highlight an existing moral conflict within your characters.
Let’s analyze two non-theoretical stories that have used Deus Ex Machina well:
1) Dobby in “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” - Dobby is the embodiment of a Force of Nature. He appears and disappears like the wind (literally) and yet is a driving force behind every complication that eventually leads our hero to overcome the evil that lurks in the plumbing. Without Dobby, relatively little action would occur in J.K. Rowling’s second installment in the series, lulling our hero and audience into a false sense of security and leaving the boy who lived woefully unprepared to fight a giant snake. Finally, after our hero has once again proved his metal, Dobby uses magic to save Harry from an attack by Dobby’s former master. Thus, the annoying cause of most of our hero’s problems has emerged to save the day and endeared himself to audiences forever.
2) The Arc of the Covenant in “Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Arc” - In this classic film, Indy finds himself tied up by Nazis as they are about to open the Arc of the Covenant, having failed to reach it before them. However, when the Arc is opened, everyone dies… except Indy. Why? Because Indy closed his eyes. “Well, that’s a dumb reason,” I can hear you say. Well, if you’re a lousy writer, it is. Thankfully, the writers in the room knew what they were doing here. The ultimate conflict between Indy and the Nazis is one of two diametrically opposed world views. One, Indy’s, is the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. The other, the Nazis, is the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of power. In that last moment, Indy’s wisdom, having studied the Arc and learned along the journey, knew that opening it would mean death. By closing his eyes, he accepted that there are powers and knowledge beyond that which man can understand. By humbling himself in that moment, he wins the moral fight, and therefore the moment when God (literally) kills the Nazis, Indy is saved.
Let’s return to our theoretical film above to wrap this up. How could we change the Deus Ex Machina moment to work? Let’s try this:
Finally, at the end of it all, the truth comes out. She uncovers who killed her father and, barely containing her heartbreak and rage, awaits his confession. Outcome be damned, the moral question for our main character is, “Will he come clean to the woman he loves or doom himself to a life of lies?” Our hero, or at least the main character, chooses the former. He sits with his lover and confesses. Her rage gets the better of her, and she pulls a gun on him. Throughout the entire movie, she’s never killed. Our main character is always the one who’s gotten blood on their hands when necessary, which has weighed heavy on his lover’s mind. She resolves herself. She weeps as she knows that, though she shouldn’t kill the man she loves, she must avenge her father. With an anguished cry, she pulls the trigger.
The gun misfires. She screams and pulls the trigger again and again and again, but the gun won’t go off. Our protagonist stands, crosses over to her, puts his hand on the gun, and lowers it. She collapses into his arms, sobbing. With a gentle smile, our hero holds his tortured lover as the sun sets behind the city below.
Why does this work? Deus Ex Machina appears in a place that we can all truly understand and believe God appears: in the workings of the firearm. There’s nothing to tell us that the gun has been tampered with, nothing that says that it shouldn’t work. However, we all know, as the audience, that crap happens. The gun not firing is just as much a miracle as Jesus himself appearing before the two of them and saying, “It’ll be okay. You don’t have to kill him.” We also get the emotional satisfaction of seeing a woman pull the trigger in a justified vengeance kill. She overcomes her inability to do the hard thing - kill - and yet she does not have to face the legal consequences. However, she’s still faced with the moral consequences, knowing she all but killed the man she loved and therefore collapses. We’re also satisfied with our hero, who smiles because he gets to keep his life for at least one more sunset with the woman he loves, and she now understands him a little bit better, having pulled the trigger with the intent to kill.
