Revising for Cause & Effect: The Four C’s—Part 3

If you’ve never heard of cause & effect as a fiction writing term, I’m about to change your writing life for the better!

Cause and effect is a little like the frame of a house. You can’t really see it but it’s there holding everything together beneath the surface. In my humble opinion, cause & effect is even more important than structure.

I’ll say that again. Cause & effect is more important than structure!

Here’s why: linking plot events together in a meaningful way is essential to creating a story that feels purposeful. Smashing random plot events together to hit a certain structural benchmark just won’t cut it. Cause & effect is what makes each plot point feel purposeful and essential, no matter which structure system (if any) you’re using.

A couple blog posts ago, I talked about the Four C’s—a framework that you can use to revise your novel at a structural level.

First, a quick recap. The Four C’s are four critical elements of your story that need to be addressed in revision so that you can get your novel right. These four elements help you hook readers on page one and keep them flipping pages until they reach the end.

They are:

• Conflict

• Character

• Cause/Effect

• Change

In this blog post, I’m focusing on cause/effect. In this context, cause/effect refers to the causal relationship between plot developments in your story and the extent to which your characters have the agency to affect the plot.

If your novel contains a series of unrelated events, readers may be thrown out of the story because it feels unrealistic or pointless. Your goal is to create a series of closely linked, purposeful events that build on one another in a compelling, engaging way.

Not sure if your story is meeting the mark? I got you! Here are four questions that you can use to assess your current draft to make sure your cause/effect relationships are rock solid.

Question #1 - Are most plot points in your story caused by plot points that came before?

If the majority of your plot points come about randomly or are caused by actions that readers don’t get to see on the page in previous scenes, they won’t feel purposeful to readers.

If you find that many of your plot points are random and disconnected, there are two ways to address the issue.

The first is to look at earlier plot points in your story and see if you can develop those events further. Create consequences that appear later in the manuscript. Amplify small plot developments so that the ripple effects that linger, complicating things for your characters and layering on conflicts.

The second option is to create connections between early plot points and the plot points that follow. If you can adjust the way that a plot point develops so that it is the direct result of a previous plot event, that works too.

Question #2 - Do your main character’s choices (good or bad) cause most plot developments?

This one can be a little bit harder. As writers, we love our characters (or love to hate them in the case of villains), we want them to succeed. We also know that our characters need to face challenges and obstacles, so we throw some minor difficulties in their path and showcase the ways that they overcome those difficulties. Or, we send in other characters to rescue them, disappearing problems from our characters lives as quickly as they come up.

The problem is that simply throwing up obstacles and having your character react to them makes that character passive. Instead, we want the main character to be an active participant in the plot, not a passive observer of the things that happen to them.

When an obstacle arises, let your main character be the one to respond and take action in response. Then, let those decisions have consequences later on in the story. Even if your character acts with the best of intentions, consider ways that their choices can backfire on them. Even if their decisions end badly, your character will have more agency and your story will be better for it.

Question #3 - Are your characters problems solved by coincidences?

Every time you introduce a conflict in your story, you are giving your characters an opportunity to grow in meaningful ways. But that growth only happens if your main character handles those problems themselves. Of course they can have help. Of course they can learn lessons from mentor characters. Of course they may not be ready to solve their own problems in the beginning of the novel (they can work up to that by the end).

Just make sure the main character is solving at least some of their problems themselves, especially at the end of the novel when it’s time for them to demonstrate what they’ve learned by navigating previous challenges in the novel.

Question #4 - Are all of your subplots resolved by the end?

This may seem odd for a blog post on cause/effect, but I promise it’s related. The event that initiates a subplot is a cause. Something happens in your story to open up another line of inquiry, an open question that readers will want to have answered by the end of the story. In order to satisfy readers, that subplots needs to have a satisfactory effect that wraps up that plotline.

If you introduce a subplot but never give it a resolution, you’re introduce a cause without an effect. When you introduce conflicts, problems, obstacles, or side characters that initiate a new plotline, make sure something else in the narrative pays off that new information. Otherwise, you’ll leave readers hanging, creating a less satisfying reading experience in the process.

That’s it for cause & effect. With these four questions, you can move closer to a stronger, more compelling plot for your book.

Want even more help developing the plot of your novel? Check out the reverse outline workshop today! You’ll learn all about the Four C’s (including cause & effect) and how to apply each one to your novel-in-progress.

You can get the workshop here - 50% off for a limited time!