Does stuff like this just happen?

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

                                           Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken 

 

Yesterday was just weird, it felt as if someone was writing an intricate plot that required events to line up perfectly or they would just fail. Well, the main event that happened yesterday was that the car broke down on the way to uni... that doesn't seem like much, does it?

Other things that seemed to have lined up perfectly:

1. My iphone broke a few weeks ago and I just received a replacement two days ago (so I was lucky I didn't break down when I didn't have a phone to call for help).
2. Talk about bad luck, my brother's car also refused to start yesterday (flat battery), so he had to call in sick... lucky me, that meant that I was able to get a ride home. 
3. I was actually going to do this post before I left for uni yesterday, but I couldn't get the page I wanted to look at to load... and now, I have so much more to add about it.

It doesn't seem like much, but there are lots of 'what if's' that could have made the situation a lot worse, like I could have been on a main highway when I broke down... I could have been in peak traffic... and I could have been missing a phone.

All stories need to concern themselves with 'What if's' in order to lead anywhere, and there's one lot of scenario's which I just love to read, and would love to be able to plot (and that's exactly what yesterday reminded me of). And, that's the Xanatos Roulette.

 This is where a series of random encounters leads to a particular plan or action that was devised by the hero/villain and if one thing doesn't align then the whole plan will be an utter failure.

I love reading about indepth plans that twists and turns and this is something that I would love to be able to tackle in my stories. The best example's of these sorts of strategies are Batman (Joker is the perfect character that uses the roulette to achieve his devious plans), it also appears in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

As long as the roulette doesn't seem too perfect and coincidental, these are fantastic story arcs to try and figure out what's going to happen.

So, what sort of stories do you like? Do you like the intricate plots? Do you try to write twisted and intricate plots?