Cause and Effect

My ‘if – then – therefore’ reflex.

Processes are connected, some dependent upon and others responsible for some degree of their associates. I don’t often spend time thinking about it directly, as it’s been trained into my mental set, but understanding the tangled web of interconnected influence throughout the world is a double edged instrument. Understanding motive and reaction proves useful up until the point that a failure to comprehend or perceive generates an error of some kind. Ultimately, this is one of the reasons I consider characters or stories driven by true chaos and unpredictability to be outside the scope of my abilities. Creating controlled and logical events lends itself to story logic, but has little to do with our reality.

I was recently playing a game, a CRPG to be more specific, and I was supremely delighted to find that they’d given the player tools to outline party AI scripts. Contingencies the characters would recognize and then autonomously take action following the prescribed guidelines. It wasn’t the most in depth or elaborate form I’ve experienced in my years as a gamer, but I appreciated the feature all the same. Designing cause triggers to create intended effects based upon predicted future events is something of a mini-game within the medium itself for me. Pushing my mind to anticipate conflict and arbitrate resolution is a puzzle, and when solved it allows characters (or real people) to flow through an event without much interference or oversight.

In the game: If a party member is wounded below acceptable threshold, then heal that ally rather than continuing an aggressive posture, therefore the team will not suffer casualties. In reality: If you’re mentally flexible, then you’ll be ready for even the unanticipated, therefore you’ll find a way to succeed.

When creating a work of fiction, I regularly plot out the course of the story and some key events I consider meaningful to the characters involved. As I often spend time working on getting into the minds and histories of my characters, they tend to take shape on the page by instinct. They may take unanticipated paths or create interesting (or challenging) new plot threads in their actions or dialog, but I trust the characters to make their way from point A to Z, going through as many cause and effect relationships as it requires. The story evolves following how they influence the world around them, as it would in an RPG, or our ideal reality. I can, and do, try to plan and anticipate, but so long as the characters allow the audience to follow a sufficiently logical course of related events, I don’t see a reason to complain.

If you’re struggling with a scene or a chapter, try to consider the cause and effect. Reverse engineer the situation if that works better for you, we all have our own style. You could also spin off multiple if-then-therefore threads of potential to see what resonates with the characters, trying to find a path from where they’ve been to where you need them to go, without stripping them of their individuality or the truth of their essence. As always, have fun building your own worlds, and watching them dance for you.