The idea is delightfully simple: for 30 days, you post once a day in response to a book-themed question. That’s it. No essays, no footnotes, no need to summon the ghost of Shakespeare, just honest answers, curious reflections, and maybe a few cheeky confessions about your reading habits. I have decided to take part this year, and since I picked a month with 31 days (I know it would have made more sense to use a 30 day one) I am using March 1st to explain what I am doing.
Each day brings a new prompt: favourite characters, memorable endings, guilty pleasures, and the books that made you weep, rage, or fall in love with the written word. It’s a gentle nudge to celebrate your literary life, one post at a time.
So why not give it a go? Dust off your bookshelf, sharpen your wit, and join the challenge. Thirty days. Thirty questions. One slightly eccentric bookworm’s journey through the pages.
DAY 22. – Least favourite plot device employed by way too many books you actually enjoyed otherwise.
Three words… Deus ex machina!
Deus ex machina is one of those grand Latin phrases that sounds terribly impressive until you realise it basically means the author has painted themselves into a corner and decided to kick the door down rather than walk out gracefully.
In modern writing, it is what happens when the plot is in absolute chaos, the characters are doomed, the villain is triumphant, the world is on fire, and suddenly something completely unexpected swoops in to fix everything. Not because it was cleverly set up. Not because it makes sense. Simply because the writer has had enough and wants to go to bed.
It is the narrative equivalent of a parent stepping into a sibling argument and declaring, “Right, that is enough, everyone stop.” Order is restored, but nobody feels satisfied.
You see it when a long lost uncle appears with the exact magical item needed to save the day, despite never being mentioned before. Or when a character who was definitely dead returns with no explanation beyond “I got better.” Or when the hero survives a certain death moment because the author suddenly remembers they like that character too much to let them go.
Readers tend to groan at it because it feels like cheating. Writers tend to use it because deadlines exist and coffee only does so much.
In short, Deus ex machina is the storytelling equivalent of pressing the big red reset button and hoping no one notices. And of course, we always notice.