Teacher Thursday. Steven talks about CAUSALITY.
Fiction writing Writing tips
These lessons come directly from TROUBLESHOOTING YOUR NOVEL by Steven James who will be your workshop leader at our Excellence in Fiction Writing Seminar. Apply today. Hold your spot with a small deposit.
Let’s talk about CAUSALITY.
One opening event causes things to splinter apart for the main character in your novel. After that, there’s a chain of events that are all linked and caused by the ones that precede them.
A story moves from choice to consequences, from stimulus to response, from cause to effect. This happens on the macro-level, as the results of each scene set the stage for the next, and on the micro-level, as every action and every line of dialogue affects what comes next.
An event’s effect on a character should be immediately evident to readers. Even if the character is trying to ignore or repress a response, he’ll be impacted somehow. He must be. If he isn’t, readers will lose trust in the story’s believability.
Every action should be justified by the intersection of setting, context, pursuit, and characterization. They all need to make sense. They all need to fit.
If you have to explain why something just happened, you’re telling the story backward.
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Today’s Task
Take a close look at your sequences. Are actions justifiable? Is your character being impacted? Is action moving the story along? Is dialogue necessary to the scene? Are you holding onto to something or someone that should be cut?
Check in next week, when Steven shows you how to fix problems with causality.
