How to Overcome Conflict in a Deus Ex Machina

Dan Brown: I look at the situation and I'm like what do they need to get out of this? He needs a razor blade. Okay. How could a razor blade have been in this scene already? Yeah. And then I go back and put it in. The first couple of things I come up with and I need to toss those aside because I want to go deeper. That's what I'm looking for is not just, oh, I want this to be extra surprising. But that's sometimes really hard to come up with.