Writers Tricks of the Trade Issue 6, Volume 6 | Page 32
BUILDING A BELIEVABLE CHAIN OF EVENTS (CONT’D)
BUILDING A BELIEVABLE
HERE, ACTION MOVES FROM CAUSE TO EFFECT. There’s no need to explain afterward why
Reggie opened the cupboard. The narrative flows naturally. Too often, novelists
show an event and then explain why it happened. This disrupts the pace and
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disorients readers. Unless you have an overwhelming contextual reason to reverse
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the order, show the action and then the result—in that order.
HERE’S ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF HOW NOT TO DO IT:
Suzanne stepped into the shower. She needed to relax. As the water washed
over her, she thought of the time she nearly drowned when she was nine. She let the
water rinse across her skin. Finally, shuddering, she hastily toweled herself dry
after turning off the faucet, and tried not to think about that traumatic day at the
lake.
As it stands, most of the events in this paragraph happen out of order and
sometimes inexplicably. (For instance, Suzanne remains in the shower instead of
leaving it right away when the painful memory returns.)
HERE’S THE EDITED VERSION:
Suzanne needed to relax, so she stepped into the shower. She let the water rinse
over her, but it made her think of the time she nearly drowned when she was nine.
Shuddering, she turned off the faucet and hastily toweled herself dry, trying not to
think about that traumatic day at the lake.
Written in this way, no follow-up explanations are needed for why she does
what she does. The actions make sense and move the story forward, and readers
don’t have to ask why things are happening.
Study your story. Can readers see how one ball affects the movement of the
others? If not, try reversing the order of events so they string together causally.
Move the narrative forward, action to reaction, rather than action to explanation.
DOES EVERYTHING IN A STORY HAVE TO BE CONNECTED?
Unless your novel centers on the absurdity of life, every subsequent event
(after the initiating one) should follow naturally and logically, otherwise the story
won’t be cohesive.
NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2016
Analyze every scene, as well as every paragraph, to weed out causeand-effect problems. Pinpoint the connections between events. Does
each action have an appropriate consequence? Does the emotional
resonance of a scene fit in congruently from the actions within that
scene? Do realizations or insights occur a er the event that caused
them (as would naturally happen), or do I have things in the wrong
order?
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WRITERS’ TRICKS OF THE TRADE