Crafting Faithful, Fateful and Serendipitous Moments in Women's Fiction

I mentioned in my previous article that September has me thinking about fate, faith, serendipity, and forging our own path in the world—especially in relation to writing women’s fiction that resonates with readers.

Crafting faithful, fateful, and serendipitous moments in women's fiction is essential.

The genre often features multiple points-of-view and interwoven storylines, and it lends itself to moments that feel inevitable, like happy coincidence or happenstance.

In fact, I think crafting faithful, fateful, and serendipitous moments in women's fiction is essential.

As women’s fiction readers, we expect the art (the story) to mimic life, so that we can safely experience events and emotions on the page that we may be trying to imagine or understand in real life. And in real life, we do encounter moments we classify as fate, faith, serendipity—or we rationalize them as the result of choices we’ve made, moving us closer to (or further from) the future we want.

Without these moments, women’s fiction could feel like it’s missing something.

But writing them takes forethought so they don’t feel contrived or too convenient. Readers expect authors not to solve problems with a sudden stroke of luck or an unexpected intervention. While that once had its place in fiction, it's no longer acceptable.

The Ancient Greeks had a word for such surprising and convenient resolutions: Deus ex Machina (Latin for “God from the Machine”). In their tragedies, a crane or trap door might bring a god onto the stage to resolve the conflict in an instant. It could amuse the audience, but it also short-circuited the story’s emotional truth.

Think of the classic nightmare device—when a character wakes up to find all the trouble was just a dream. That’s Deus ex Machina, too. It lacks emotional impact as a literary device.

And yet, authors often need to create setups with payoffs that, on the surface, look like coincidence. I did this in my first novel, Letting Go.

Protagonist Callie Winters, is told by her Big Pharma employer that she must travel to her father’s remote mountain village in Colorado to strike a deal with an organic skincare co-operative—the very same town where the one man she least wants to see happens to live.

Off course, he’s the first person she bumps into. Cue that famous line from Casablanca:

“Of all the gin joints, in all the bars, in all the towns in the world, she walks into mine.”

On the surface, this pay-off (a second chance meet-cute) sounds very convenient. If there wasn't a feasible setup, you’d need to suspend disbelief as a reader and hope the author to would eventually deliver the depth and believability you expect from women’s fiction.

But if you’ve read Letting Go, you’ll know that between Callie learning she’s headed to Jackson’s Bridge and her encounter with Dave Woods, I did lay the logical groundwork to make this meeting the natural result of a cause and effect sequence—even if the steps were subtle.

A reader may not notice every detail on a first read-through, but it feels right because it’s there. That’s the secret: a logical sequence of cause and effect, so even if the characters themselves don’t see it coming, readers need to understand how it did.

So why risk it if it can look too convenient? Because these moments are not just a gamble—they’re essential.

Just as in life, women’s fiction thrives on emotions, tropes, and themes that reflect a recognizable world. If stories lacked those serendipitous events that bring people together at the right time—open doors just when a character needs them (or close them so another path can be taken), or reward a leap of faith—they would feel just as unbelievable. The difference is that these moments must be woven into the fabric of the story—paired with characters consciously moving toward desire or away from their pain, and result from choices the characters are making.

In life, we call it fate, chance, or serendipity. In women’s fiction, we call it good storytelling—crafted with enough care that readers feel it couldn’t have unfolded any other way.

Have you read Letting Go? Why not see if you can find the trail of carefully laid clues leading to pharmaceutical chemist bumping into herb farmer and mountain man, Dave Woods for yourself.

Get your copy today at your Amazon store.