Chapter Six

Plot by Cause and Effect

Congratulations! You have begun the process of plotting out your story. Before you test your scenes for cause and effect, take a few minutes to examine the beginning portion of your Plot Planner.

How many scenes were you able to plot above the line? How many scenes are arranged below the line? Were you honest about the scenes you put above the line? Do they indeed have some sort of tension and conflict? Does the power reside with someone or something other than the protagonist? Yes? Terrific! Still not sure? That’s okay. As long as you can justify why you put them where you did, that is sufficient for now.

Perhaps you have only a few sticky notes strung along the beginning portion of your Plot Planner line. Your imagination has stalled, and you’re struggling to come up with scene ideas to fill in all the looming blank spaces. If this is the case, you can generate scene ideas that produce unexpected twists and turns in your story by utilizing the concept of cause and effect.

Using Cause and Effect

What does that mean? Cause and effect are critical elements to plotting out your novels, short stories, memoirs, and creative nonfiction.

If you utilize cause and effect as you plot, you ensure that the events that happen in one scene cause the events that happen in the next scene. If you are able to link your scenes by cause and effect, each scene is organic. From the seeds you plant in the first scene grow the fruits of the next scene.

A story is made up of scenes with a clear dependence on each other. The conflict at the center of a scene represents the motivating cause that sets a series of events in motion. As you test your scenes for cause and effect, notice how some features of your story are more important than others. Look for patterns, and see which elements lead to the thematic significance of your story and which do not.

Cause and effect within and between scenes allows you to seamlessly lead the reader to each major turning point by linking the cause in one scene to the effect in the next scene. This sequencing allows the energy of the story to rise smoothly.

Avoiding Episodic Scenes

Let me give you an example of what is not cause and effect. Say you are looking at the arrangement of the scenes in your story. Do you find yourself saying, “This event happens first, and then this happens next, and then this happens next, and then …”? You get the picture. If you ever hear an agent or editor tell you that your story is “too episodic” or “not causally linked,” he or she means that your scenes are not strongly linked by cause and effect.

Scenes are episodic if they are not linked by cause and effect. If scenes are linked by cause and effect, each scene is meaningful to all the other scenes. Episodic events and random incidents are either boring or disconcerting.

Keep in mind that for every story where the causality sequence breaks down, where scenes come out of the blue, or where the story turns episodic and fails to connect with the reader, there are also those stories that shine with a looser, less-causally related arrangement. The presentation of most of the key scenes of All the Light We Cannot See could be labeled as episodic. Ultimately all of the scenes in the novel do tie together masterfully; however, by deciding not to link his scenes tightly together from one scene to the next, and by changing point-of-view characters and switching from one time period to another and then back, Doerr may cause readers some initial confusion and disorientation. Yet by using suspense at the end of each transitional scene and leaving the reader dangling from the cliff of not knowing what’s coming, he speeds the story from one nonlinear event to the next.

If you’re able to connect key scenes by cause and effect, either directly by linking one scene to the next or indirectly by twisting time, you will not be told your work is episodic. Instead the reader will be able to disappear seamlessly and effortlessly into the story.

Cause and effect is helpful in tying scenes together. It can also deepen the character’s emotional development by conveying the effect of external events, people, and places on her emotions. For example, in one scene, a character responds emotionally to an event that interferes with her reaching her goal, like her mother’s death, a bad breakup, an embezzlement, or a betrayal. In the next scene, we see the outcome of that emotional response, which, in turn, becomes the cause for another emotional effect.

To test if your story is tight and if your scenes are arranged by cause and effect, see if you can go from scene to scene and say, “In this scene, this event happens. Because that happens, then this happens, and because that happens, then this next conflict arises.”

Do you notice the rhythm? What you planted in the first scene emerges in the next scene. The second scene cannot happen without the first scene happening. The third scene happens because the first two scenes unfolded before it. Each element is linked.

We are always striving to find meaning in the bigger picture, both in our own lives and in the stories we write. We want to know why one event gives rise to the next—to feel the inevitability of cause and effect. Your readers will expect that the events that unfold in one scene will have repercussions in the next.

Linking Scenes Through Chosen Details

When you find a scene in your story that does not arise from the scene that comes before it, see if you can introduce an element, perhaps in a sentence or two, designed to lead into the next scene without shifting the focus of the current scene. For instance, say that the theme of the story is “The answers are always right in front of you.” If scene one ends with the protagonist staring into a telescope, scene two could start with the protagonist dusting or moving the telescope. Adding details like this is not as satisfying as incorporating true cause and effect, but it at least provides a sense of continuity in nonrelated scenes.

If you find that even this strategy of linking scenes through chosen details does not work for you, then you may need to cut that scene or tweak it in such a way that it becomes the effect of the scene that comes before it or is at least connected to all the other scenes in the bigger story. You cannot stick a scene in your story just because the writing is beautiful or the format intriguing. You owe it to the reader to provide meaning.

Think of conflict in scene as the cause. The character’s reaction to that cause is the effect the conflict has on the character. When the character responds to the conflict, his actions create yet another cause and, in turn, another effect. The story then moves from scene to scene by cause and effect. Every part plays into the whole, and the result is a satisfying story.

Example

If we go from scene to scene in Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts, we discover well-established and carefully placed cause and effect. Because Novalee is pregnant, she frequently has to ask Willy Jack to stop the car so she can use the bathroom. Because Willy Jack refuses to stop, Novalee is forced to ask him, yet again, to stop. Because Novalee keeps asking Willy Jack to stop, he abandons her. Because he abandons her, Novalee meets three crucial characters: Sister Husband, Moses W., and Benny.

Because each scene is linked to the one that came before it and the one that comes after, we draw a line from one to the next on the Plot Planner to indicate that the connection is unbroken.

Plotting Nonlinear Stories

You may chose to organize the scenes of your story in a nonlinear progression, meaning that rather than present your scenes in chronological order from beginning to end in a straight line, you arrange them out of order. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger and All the Light We Cannot See are brilliantly portrayed out of chronological order and without following a tight causality pattern.

Linking scenes by tight cause and effect proves difficult, if not downright impossible, in a story where scenes are arranged and presented out of their natural order of occurrence. To help readers navigate through her story, Niffenegger presents the scenes of her two main characters, husband and wife Henry and Claire, using different strategies. Claire always moves through her scenes chronologically, as this is how she experiences time. However, Henry has the ability to time travel. His scenes reflect his time traveling as he hurls into the past, is yanked back to real time, and is spun into the future. The challenge in presenting the story out of order both in time and in cause and effect is to smooth the way so the reader doesn’t become confused. Until readers are familiar and comfortable with the way the story is presented, the beginning scenes of The Time Traveler’s Wife can be difficult to follow.

Rather than reporting a straight chain of events influenced by cause and effect and dependent on a sequential development of scenes, All the Light We Cannot See presents a time line that skips around. In the World War II love story, Marie-Laure and Werner grow up in the shadow of war and then attempt to survive the ensuing devastation. This story portrays the events of their lives by moving back and forth in time before, during, and after the invasion. However, the nonlinear structure is a benefit, not a detriment, to the story; it creates added depth that a more linear cause-and-effect presentation would have lacked.

In a nonlinear story, ensure your scenes move seamlessly and remain thematically true, even without the help of tight cause and effect. Before writing your scenes out of order, first plot them out on a Plot Planner in chronological order. This allows you to better manipulate the scenes and create the greatest dramatic action, excitement, meaning, and character emotional development when you later mix up the time sequence.

Plot the Cause and Effect in the Beginning

It’s time to test whether the scenes you plotted from the beginning of your story are arranged by cause and effect.

Start at scene one. Say to yourself, “In scene one, this event happens.” Now ask yourself, “Does what happens in scene one cause scene two?” If so, draw a line linking scene one to scene two. If not, leave a blank space between these scenes on the Plot Planner.

Now move to scene two. Again, ask yourself if what happens in scene two causes the conflict or action in scene three.

Move from scene to scene, asking yourself if one scene causes another. Each time you find cause and effect taking place, draw a line from one scene to the next to indicate the linkage between the two. Continue in this way until you arrive at the end of the beginning.

Do not worry if every scene is not influenced by cause and effect. As with the other techniques in this book, the discussion in this chapter is just a guideline. A working knowledge of cause and effect helps to ensure that you are building a satisfying story structure. The more adept you are at creating cause and effect, the better.

If you find that, in most cases, the story flows naturally from one scene to the next through cause and effect, you are in good shape. However, if you find that the story is episodic, then you will benefit from further exploration into the aspects of cause and effect.

Viewing your story as a whole on your Plot Planner and determining the causality between scenes and the overall coherence of your story gives insight into how you can turn all your scenes into the driving force behind an exceptional story.

Without cause and effect, the tempo and intensity of the story can bog down, and the writer can get stuck.