Lesson 12: Cause and Effect and Continuity

What is cause and effect? Most of us are familiar with the idea of cause and effect in life. We learn from an early age that certain actions will create predictable reactions, whether they are physical, behavioral or emotional. When writing, you must remember to include the effect of each action in your story, as the effects will not just naturally appear as they do in reality.

1. The effect must be very close to the cause. If you have Bill punch Jack in the face, move on to your dramatic dialogue, change point of view for a couple of chapters, and then return to Jack and show that his nose is bleeding, your reader may have to pause and try to remember exactly why that should be. Keeping your cause and effect relationships close together helps to eliminate confusion.
2. As much as possible, keep causal relationships separate. In other words, don’t show Cause 1, Cause 2, Effect 1, Cause 3, Effect 2…. Again this creates confusion in the reader and slows enjoyment of the story. Using the fighting analogy again, you wouldn’t show Bill punching Jack, Bill kicking Jack in the shins, Jack reeling from the punch, then Jack holding his knee. Show the punch, the head moving back, the kick and then the knee holding reaction.
3. Don’t overwhelm a character with actions. If Marsha screams at Adam, throws a bottle at his head, threatens to call the police on him and shoots him with pepper spray, now what will he do? He has too much stimulus thrown at him at once for him to react to all of it. Try to keep it to one action plus one reaction at a time.
4. Sometimes the reaction will be unexpected. For example: “Will you marry me?” John asked Julie. Julie hit John over the head with a beer bottle. At this point, the reader is saying, “whaaat?” Obviously there is something missing here. In a scenario like this, an internalization (character’s thoughts) is needed to clear up the confusion. The edited version will look like this: “Will you marry me?” John asked Julie (cause/action). How could he ask me now, she thought. Now that I’ve finally given up on him and said yes to Fred? What a jerk! A sudden fit of anger hit her (internalization). Julie hit John over the head with a beer bottle (effect/reaction). Now the reaction makes sense.

What is continuity? Simply put, continuity is story logic. When you start a plot element and don’t finish it, make characters behave contrary to what we expect, make the reader focus on an object or person and then don’t make them significant later, you have committed a continuity lapse. Unlike reality, nothing should be arbitrary in your story. The following are some common continuity lapses that should be avoided:

1. The insignificant object. As we discussed in Lesson 11, an object, location or person should not be described in great detail unless they are essential to the story. Think of description as pointing a video camera at an object during a movie. If you make a big deal out of pointing out an object and then you never refer to it again, it gives the reader the impression that you are either a sloppy storyteller or that you forgot that object.
2. The inconsistent character. This one refers to a previous lesson also, Lesson 5. Once you have established the basic nature of a character, you must stick to that personality. It is a challenge to establish personality in a character in the first place, and if you go counter to it you will ruin all of your previous hard work. Honest characters don’t steal, prudish heroines don’t fall into bed without any resistance, and shy characters don’t sing karaoke unless a death threat is involved. It is okay for a character to have opposing characteristics, but you must establish that early and often. The continuity lapse occurs when you break character late in the story, after the personality has been set in stone.
3. The dangling plot point. Any time you put a twist or significant development in your plot, it should have a downstream effect on the rest of the story. When significant events happen that have no effect on the story, it can make the story lose its punch and feel trite. For example, if you show Jeremy cheating on his wife, he should be shown dealing with that later in the story at some level. If he has his fling and then it is never mentioned again, the reader feels as if that event meant nothing to the character, and they lose respect for the character and consequently, the plot itself. Even if Jeremy is a villain, this event should serve to solidify his wanton ways or lead to further debauchery. If an event is meaningless to the plot, either greatly downplay it or eliminate it altogether.
4. The cut scene. Sometimes you will have two or more storylines that are running parallel to one another. This can be a great way to keep a story alive, changing viewpoint every so often to keep the reader engaged, leaving one character at a great narrative hook moment to focus on another. It is very important that when you leave one storyline for another, you must pick the first storyline up in a place that logically follows where the reader left him/her. Example: At the end of Chapter 3, Edgar has had a terrible car wreck. We leave him in this predicament for a couple of chapters while we explore our second storyline. In Chapter 7, we open with Edgar boarding a plane for Paris. What is missing here? If you want to move from a car accident to an international flight, you can. To pull this off you must add a segue, such as, “People stared at the bandage on Edgar’s head as he waited in line for his luggage.” As long as you refer to the previous scene, your reader can handle the change of setting. If you leave out the linking actions or phrases, it prompts the reader to thumb back to the past chapter, wondering what he or she missed.
5. Abandoning the story question. Hopefully you have accepted by now that the story question IS the story. If you wander too far from the basic premise of the plot, you will eventually lose your reader. Nothing is more frustrating as a reader than to read fifty pages of something only to find out that it has no effect whatsoever on the story question that we have invested time and interest in finding the answer to.

The Bottom Line: It is very important that everything you write is logical and consistent. Help your reader to follow and enjoy your story without messing with his head!