I've Been Thinking About...Cause and Effect (Because of this....)

Don't skip past this because it sounds boring. It's helpful to your writing. Plus, there are pictures of clotheslines. And I know you've been waiting for those.

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Okay, hello everyone. I’m going to try to make this short because I’m busy applying this concept to my own WIP and also reading manuscripts and attempting to get myself organized. (Thank you for all the tips I got from my Sunday love letter, they were helpful.)

I have been working with a thing. A thing that is so, so, helpful I can’t wait to share it with you. Pantsers, listen up. Those of you who are lost in the plot forest (to borrow a phrase from Daniel David Wallace) take heed. Plotters who are wondering why your novel isn’t working, read on. This thing that I have for all of you is going to help you figure out your story. And isn’t that all any of us want?

Want to know what it is? Are your ready for it? (As if my title didn’t give it away.) It’s working with cause and effect, the good old because of that….(Or in the words of my youngest grandson Because Why?) Yes, I know you’ve probably heard of it. But have you actually stopped, thought, and applied it to your story? Because when you do, it is like magic. Seriously.

I’ll be honest here, I have resisted this concept with most of my whole heart and soul. It has always seemed so bloodless, so uncreative, so practical, so….boring. And I was one of those who knew about it but shrugged my shoulders and moved onto the next tip. Years ago, when I was just a wee writing baby, I attended a conference and heard an author talk about cause and effect. Made sense, but I never had much luck putting it into use. (The author was a cute, perky, romance writer and I didn’t think much of her demeanor, so I didn’t take her advice seriously. Oh, wee writing baby, you were such a silly snob.)

Then I heard more about it in a class I took from Jenni Nash, who has writers do a whole outline based on cause and effect, on asking because of that, then this? (On this blog post by Jenni, there’s a link to a PDF which explains her process, which is more complicated than mine.) The whole process reeks of plotting, and while I’m not a strict pantser, going too far into the plotting realm makes me recoil. Again, tried it, hated it, ditched it.

The sagging clothesline

And then suddenly something landed for me. It came from desperation. The first half of the novel I’ve drafted meandered. The proto is supposedly a character who takes quick action and believes everything is fixable. Yet she drifts through the story, sashaying about, not doing much and certainly not meeting any challenges that might change her. There was no throughline. Vague conflict. No there there.

My story was a clothesline with a saggy cord.

Photo by Dmitry Arslanov on Unsplash

Truth be told, I’m not even certain what made me suddenly decide to apply cause and effect to this mass of passivity. But it did, and like the proverbial and cliched lightning strike from the blue, I could see exactly where and why my story sagged. Suddenly the cord of my clothesline was pulled taut, with scenes neatly clipped to it in order.

Photo by Chloe Skinner on Unsplash

But how to do it?

You don’t even have to throw the baby out with the bathwater to do this. (Where did that cliche come from? Oh wait, I have an answer for that.¹) A caveat: I have only truly dug into this process with an already written draft. I can see how it would be ridiculously useful to do before setting out to draft, but I haven’t tried that yet. Given the way I do things, which is to charge in without thinking much (never met an instruction booklet I could follow) and then seek help once I’m totally confused, not sure how helpful it would be. So what follows assumes you have some kind of draft sorted.

1. Create a list of scenes that you have written or planned.

2. At the end of each scene description write (I do it in all caps) BECAUSE OF THIS…

3. Look at your list. Is there cause and effect? Does one action lead to another or are they just unhung pieces of clothing that need to be strung up tight?

4. Figure out how to string the scenes up into a nice taut throughline. Once you start doing this and looking at your list you will notice immediately where things don’t connect.

5. Behold…your scene list that contains a cohesive plot. Phew.

I’m not going to lie. The concept of this is simple, but doing it is hard. And it takes time. But honestly, it’s going to make the actual writing so much easier. Because you will have the whole thing figured out. And beyond that, you will know that the whole thing works.

Hope things are going well with you and your writing. Thanks for reading. Please let me know if this is helpful to you (or if you do some variation of it) in the comments or hit reply and you’ll come right into my inbox. I do answer every email and comment that I get.

1. According to Wikipedia, the earliest use of this phrase is in 1512, in a piece by Thomas Murner in Germany, which was accompanied by a woodcut showing a woman tossing out the baby with waste water. Hey—while you’re checking out that Wikipedia article throw some money their way. I donate a small amount to them monthly.