Plotting the good lie

Your hero triumphs over his his/her antagonist, or fails horribly. No matter what, in a story the conflict should be resolved within scope of the conflict itself. That is good story telling. An example of not so good story telling would be a deus ex machinae resolution.

You probably recognize this and acknowledge it as well, as do I. Still, this is only a matter the good lie. Herein lies an interesting conflict. Where character focus has shown a tendency to go as far as making realistic characters more important than interesting characters the same can not be said for plot. Realistically the unexpected, the god in the machine, happens all too often. Still, you know that the reader will be aghast if the last chapter ends with the hero or villain getting killed accidentally in a car crash.

Episodes should lead to episodes which lead to a resolution, and the as sudden as late introduction of an event, outside the scope of the story, which takes it into a totally different direction is not popular.

So we force the plot to stay within the boundaries of the good story, telling the reader the good lie. Obviously the same should be done with characters. Plotting the good lie has to be followed by telling the good lie in order to give the reader a good read. In fantasy character and plot need to be lied well; setting to a certain extent less so.