Morticia Addams

In reality, I don’t entirely believe in karma. At the very least, I think it misses most of the time.  That’s not what this post is about, but it is a big reason why I have trouble putting it into stories.  How do I think it’s supposed to work?

I tend to put karma and irony in the same bucket.  Not only because I have a terrible grasp of each one.  It’s because I see both as having a character get their comeuppance in some fashion.  A character receives a reward or punishment, usually the latter, that is connected to their actions.  For example, the villain who is abusive to their pet cat and they end up getting eaten by a tiger.  I guess that’s irony, but it’s also supposed to be how karma has finally caught up to them.

People do seem to enjoy these twists.  Although, I find it hard to call these story events twists.  If something is a twist, I’d like to think it’s a surprise.  A lot of times karma is used, people can see it coming from a mile away.  This is because it tends to be used as the final punishment for a villain and combined with irony.  Audiences will start planning out how they would make a disliked character suffer from karma catching up to them, which tends to be giving them a taste of their own medicine.  So, they’ll be looking for the signs when they realize it’s reaching the conflict resolution stage.

You might think that not doing a karmic twist is the way to go.  It can, but then you’ll have people annoyed that the villains didn’t suffer the right way.  That or the villains get away, which has people saying that the story shows reality where the bad guys win without karma even sneezing in their direction.  It’s kind of funny how karma/irony is barely understood by most people, but so many expect it to be used in every story that they read or watch.

Thinking about it, I can’t remember if I ever used karmic twists in my stories.  I’m going to assume that it was a big thing for villains in Bedlam.  That series really did have the vibe of bad guys practically announcing how they were going to die.  The thing is that I don’t believe I would have planned it with karma in mind.  All I did was write my stories and noted when the villain would be defeated or die.  Same goes for any heroes who might have been struck by karma.  It was all spur of the moment decisions that my brain told me felt right.  Maybe that’s how these kind of story twists should go?  Let them be natural, organic, and a surprise to the author.

On the other hand, I can see how some preparation is needed.  For the irony version of karma to strike, you need to set it up.  That way, people know there’s some kind of cosmic influence over what they’re seeing.  Keep in mind that many karmic/ironic twists in action-focused stories will go the route of bizarre coincidence.  Without some early hint, the twist can be seen as random and closer to a Looney Tune episode.  If that’s not the tone you’re going for then it’s going to have a negative effect.  For example, take the villain mentioned earlier who abuses their cat and gets eaten by a lion.  If that fate is simply unleashed without warning then you get this:

(Yes, I know OJ Simpson is in it.  My love for Leslie Nielsen gets me through watching these movies again.  Comic gold.)

Anyway, karma really does need some kind of foundation.  Otherwise, it’s a random fate for a villain.  Closer to a shock event than a karmic one.  Both have their uses, but they aren’t interchangeable.

So, what do you think about karmic twists in fiction?