On How Plot Construction Reverses Cause and Effect
A simple plot-building trick in which you create your plot backwards
This morning, I went to my local coffee shop to get a coffee and brownie, as — as they say — is my wont. One of the women working there asked me how I was getting on with writing and said that she would love to be able to write but just doesn’t have the ideas. I replied that while you do need sparks of inspiration, there are techniques that you can learn, one of which is to construct your plots backwards, reversing cause and effect.
The two examples I gave her were:
In real-life, a woman might stab her husband because he was having an affair. In your novel, the husband was having an affair because you needed a reason for her to stab him.
In real-life, plane crash survivors walking to rescue might be forced to build a rope bridge to span a ravine that turned out to be in the way. In your novel, you create the ravine because you need them to build a rope bridge (or to put it another way, you realised that this section of your story was flat and boring, and that you needed to give your protagonists an extra challenge to overcome).
So if you’re having trouble coming up with a plot, I told her, work backwards. Start with what you want to happen (the effect), and then ask yourself what might events or actions might make this happen (the cause).
And then everyone in the café clapped and cheered.
(Okay, maybe the last bit isn’t true, but the rest, honest-to-god, is).
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