Cause and Effect (or Choices and Consequences)

“Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You see, too often as writers, we think in sequential events, not consequential effects.”—September C. Fawkes

Over the past few months I’ve spent a few hours each night watching episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, the popular, long-running TV medical drama (with past seasons available on Netflix) about a group of young doctors in a Seattle hospital learning how to become surgeons. 

There are a lot of reasons why I’m watching the show, not the least of which is because it’s a terrific story (thanks to its creator, Shonda Rhimes), with multiple plot-lines and characters who make mistakes and learn about each other and fall in and out of love as they try to master the challenging art of medicine (and life). But the main reason I’m watching is because, from a writer’s perspective, each episode offers a chance to study the principle of cause and effect.

Cause and effect is what drives a story forward. It’s the engine of plot. And watching Grey’s Anatomy helps me better understand the way cause and effect works as the scaffolding of a story. Once you understand how cause and effect works, you can begin to see how a plot emerges out of the choices that each character makes. Each choice means a character must act in a certain way.  And each action leads to a certain consequence. And each consequence leads to another choice… and so on. Cause and effect, or choice and consequence. It’s how a story unfolds, one choice at a time.

So I’m thinking how this idea of choice and consequence might help us craft plots for our stories. Sometimes it’s helpful to ask each of our characters what he/she/they might want. But watching Grey’s Anatomy, I’m learning that the principle of choice and consequence means asking the question slightly differently as what does our character want to do? Go right or left? Straight or backward? Climb up or down? Go in the water or stay on land? Each choice has a consequence—sometimes an intentional result, sometimes unintentional.

Here’s how cause and effect (or choice and consequence) worked in an episode that I just finished watching in season 9. One of the characters, Arizona Robbins, a pediatrics surgeon, is married to another surgeon, Callie Torres, and makes a choice to sleep with another woman, a visiting facial reconstruction surgeon. Her choice to cheat on Callie leads to a series of consequences. There’s her own remorse, of course. But there’s the waterfall of events that changes their relationship going forward. There’s Callie’s anger toward Arizona, which leads to her decision to leave the marriage and move out. For a while she stays with Derek and Meredith, and ultimately she decides to kick Arizona out of the condo they’ve shared so she can have her life back.

What’s clear in this flow of events is how much Callie wants to be happy. What does she have to do to be happy? Once she makes the decision to be happy again, she figures out it’s time to leave her marriage, and to stop helping other people and to help herself instead. These are all decisions that she acts on. Will she make another decision that will bring her back to Arizona in the end? Will Arizona decide to do something to win Callie back and atone for her mistake? I don’t know. But it’s possible. The story depends on their choices, and on the consequences that result from their choices.

Of course, I could offer other examples of cause and effect. But you get the idea. Stories are based on cause and effect, choice and consequence. Whether you’re reading a novel or watching a show, you can study each character and note the different actions that he or she makes and then follow the consequences of those decisions. There will be actions and re-actions. And you’ll see, I suspect, how each character‘s decisions impacts their lives as well as the lives of whoever they come into contact with. 

Choices and decisions. Cause and effect. These are the essential ingredients for a story to capture a reader’s attention (and heart). 

For more info on cause and effect, visit:

https://www.writersdigest.com/there-are-no-rules/cause-effect-telling-story-right-order

https://www.septembercfawkes.com/2020/04/why-story-cause-and-effect-and-how-to_13.html

https://storygrid.com/cause-and-effect/

For more info on Grey’s Anatomy, check out: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey's_Anatomy

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0413573/

Swimming Practice: Characters and Conflict

How many times have you dived into the water and written a scene, believing that you’d captured the character and the central conflict of your story, only to emerge from that dream-world to find the scene flat, the conflict non-existent, still hidden?

It happens to me all the time, just as I suspect it happens to many writers.

But why does it happen?

I suspect it’s the result of diving into our stories too soon, before we truly know our characters or the situations in which they might find themselves.

Sometimes I find it helpful to spend time simply “dreaming” the story, putting down my pen and visualizing the setting and the characters, and watching (as if through a hidden window) what the characters are doing.

Another helpful method that you might consider using to gain deeper insights into your characters is to interview them.

All that you need to do is make a list of questions, such as: What does your character like to eat for breakfast? What’s his favorite snack? Her favorite color? What does he secretly desire or fear the most? Who does she have a crush on? What is his or her greatest weakness?

Each character is unique, and the answers to these kinds of questions can help bring a character to life in your imagination, even if you don’t use the information in the story.

Try starting with a minimum of ten questions. (Some writers, not satisfied with ten questions, make lists and lists of questions.) Then take the time to sit down with your characters and pose the questions to them... and write down their responses.

After you’ve finished the interviews, you’ll find yourself better equipped to determine the conflict in your story and, indeed, better able to see if your story has any conflict at all.

To determine if your story has conflict, ask yourself this question:

What are the opposing forces standing in the way of what my character wants?

If there are no opposing forces, or if you can’t identify them, then you don’t yet have a story.

Remember that somebody must want something, even if it’s a desire not to do something, and somebody else–or something–must keep your character from getting what she wants (or force her to do what she doesn’t want to do).

To better understand the forces which create conflict, consider the following situations, and think about what ingredients you might add to to stir up conflict:

a) a girl doesn’t want to go to a party, but....
b) a boy wants to go fishing, but....
c) a girl wants to leave the castle and explore forest, but...
d) a boy doesn’t want to do homework, but...

Come up with five more situations that reveal conflict.

Then turn to your characters–who you’ve spent time interviewing and whose secrets you know–and place them in a situation with potential conflict and see how they respond.

Try to create at least two situations.

In the first situation, show your character wanting something, and something--or someone-- standing in his or her way.

In the second situation, show your character not wanting to do something, and something--or someone--is forcing them to do it.

By developing these different situations, you may discover:

a) Characters who want something encounter conflict when they meet an opposing force-- something or someone--that keeps them from getting what they want. (The scene or story is about them figuring out how to get past the opposition. It’s a bit like hitting a wall and needing to find a way around it.)

b) Characters who don’t want to do something, but encounter an opposing force (something or someone) that insists that they do it, are involved in a different conflict, a kind of tug-of-war. (The challenge in such a situation is for them to figure out how to avoid being pulled over the line... and how to pull in the direction that they want to go in.)

So, if you’re ready to start this exercise, put down your pen and spend a few minutes visualizing your character in a specific situation.

Can you see the full picture–the dreamscape of setting and the character? Can you feel what he or she is feeling? (Only when you feel what your character is feeling should you pick up your pen and start writing.)

After you finish this exercise and climb out of the water, let us know if the exercise worked. Anything to add? Anything that didn’t work?

Good luck as you explore your characters and the conflicts that drive their stories.

For more on characters and conflict, visit:
http://www.musik-therapie.at/PederHill/Character.htm
http://www.musik-therapie.at/PederHill/Conflict.htm
http://www.tinastjohn.com/writers-conflict.html
http://www.hodrw.com/characterandconflict.htm
http://www.megaessays.com/essay_search/conflict_characters.html