Improbable events occur in real life. We all know they do. One of our sons met his wife in Georgetown pub where they’d both taken refuge from a violent downpour. There was no other possible point of contact, no mutual acquaintances, no job interrelation, and neither frequented such establishments or Georgetown. It just happened to be the closest refuge. They’ve been married more than twenty years.

Everyday life is filled with improbabilities – or seeming improbabilities, and such improbabilities often aren’t life-threatening or world-saving. By the same token, at times the seeming improbabilities are only improbable to those who aren’t aware of the situation.

The fact that Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger successfully landed a powerless Airbus A320 in the Hudson River in 2009 with no fatalities and only a few minor injuries seems improbable at first sight. But the real improbability wasn’t that Sullenberger made the landing. He was a former fighter pilot who had been an airline pilot since leaving the United States Air Force in 1980, who had logged 19,663 total flight hours, including 4,765 in an A320. He was also a glider pilot and expert on aviation safety.

The improbability was that he was in command when the aircraft suffered a massive bird-strike that took out both engines simultaneously. In fiction, that kind of improbability, where only the protagonist has the skills to pull off the seeming impossibility, is often hard for readers and editors to swallow.

One way to deal with it is to point out that many senior pilots have those skills, and that’s one of the reasons why they’re in command. That turns the situation into a “best of the best,” rather than “the only one who could.” It’s also based on the fact that there’s a system for developing such pilots and their skills.

As many of my readers can likely point out, I tend to feature protagonists who take a long time developing skills, if sometimes improbable ones. And once in a while, such as with Natural Ordermage, I show just how much trouble someone can get into by ignoring schooling and systems.

It’s not that you can’t present the improbable, but that you have to learn how to present the improbable so that it doesn’t seem impossible.