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The Causal Chain And Why Your Story Needs It

The most obnoxious thing my writing teacher taught me every story needed, that I absolutely loathed studying in the moment and that only later, after months of resisting and fighting realized she was right, was something called the causal chain.

Simply put, the causal chain is the linked cause-and-effect that must logically connect every event, reaction, and beat that takes place in your story to the ones before and after.

The Causal Chain is exhausting to go through. It is infuriating when someone points out that an event or a character beat comes out of nowhere, unmoored from events around it.

It is profoundly necessary to learn and include because a cause-and-effect chain is what allows readers to follow your story logically which means they can start anticipating what happens next, which is what is required for a writer to be able to build suspense and cognitively engage the audience, to surprise them, and to not infuriate them with random coincidences that hurt or help the characters in order to clumsily advance the author's goals.

By all means, write your story as you want to write it in the first draft, and don't worry about this principle too much. This is an editing tool, not a first draft tool. But one of the first things you should do when retroactively begin preparing your story to be read by others is going step by step through each event and confirming that a previous event leads to it and that subsequent events are impacted by it on the page.

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really funny that many wireless earbud cases are almost the perfect size to go on the end of a watch chain in a waistcoat pocket. hashtag modern fob ideas

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it came to me in a vision

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it's insane how normalized 3d printing is i don't think people born post 2005 can comprehend how fantastical "appearing things with machines" was as an idea. kind of like cryogenics or VR indistinguishable from being somewhere. like i remember learning about 3d printing about 10 years ago and feeling like it was a little bit sci fi teletransportation magic like it was truly a mind=blown technological moment and now it's just like. do you want to buy this figurine of dawyne the rock johnson as pikachu on etsy

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Swerpion Velmal Arche Submission by CocoaMix

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it came to me in a vision

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me when im on the titanic and im pushing my way through the crowd to get on one of the lifeboats

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This was the only thing I remembered from this game from when I first played it in 2012. Someday we'll disappear for no reason

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This wont upload but at least i get to see it mocking me. Actually i think this should be the default error icon

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Erarg creates world’s first Happypasta

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Cunt is better than all of these, all the time, everywhere, in every context. It's the only word that doesn't sound weird to actually say during sexual context.

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lol. jesus just tried to come back but he reincarnated as an ant and someone stepped on him. another 2000 years

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hey, yeah you! the angry ones, the aggressive ones, the violent ones. cm'here i got something to say to you.

hey there...

the ones who get irritated really quickly and snap at the wrong person.

the ones who get angry quickly but it goes away quickly, especially when the ones around you don't get over it so fast.

the ones who first thought is to hurt the one who caused you this anger, or just the first person in sight.

the ones who direct their anger at themselves.

the ones who direct their anger at their environment instead of themselves or the people around them.

the ones who get so angry their body burns with heat, causing the anger to worsen.

the ones who get so angry they flip the numb switch and can't feel anything for a while.

the ones who act on those violent thoughts.

the ones who hide their anger and bottle it up over and over again until it explodes.

the ones who can't tell their anger apart from other emotions.

the ones who get stuck in their head due to their rage.

the ones who spiral when they get angry.

the ones who get even angrier when you let yourself spiral cause of your anger.

the ones who get angry over the littlest thing.

i see you, and despite all of this you are still worthy of being loved. worthy of being seen as an equal. worthy of being cared for. worthy of being treated as another 'normal' person.

i love you (/p). your anger doesn't define you, even though it might seem like it does.

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i think the hardest i’ve ever been owned was when my boyfriend and i were talking about our favorite feelings/sensations and he was like “my top 9 out of 10 feelings are sex with you” and i was like “aw baby🥺🥺🥺. what’s the tenth one??” and he didn’t hesitate even a little before saying “sex with your mom”