Fiction Writer’s Toolshed · Practical Tools for Authors
Your scenes might work on their own, but together the plot feels like a stack of events: this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s advice is to look for “but” or “therefore” between your story beats. I understood why that made sense. What I needed was a way to use it on a draft. In this episode, I turn that principle into three practical questions I’m calling the Causal Chain Audit.
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Fiction Writer’s Toolshed
Trey Parker & Matt Stone's Writing Rule: How to Fix an 'And Then' Plot | ep 024
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What this episode covers
- The cause-and-effect principle behind Parker and Stone’s writing rule.
- Related ideas from Aline Brosh McKenna, Will Storr, Aaron Sorkin, and Aristotle.
- Three questions to test how your scenes depend on one another.
- A worked example that turns a sequence of events into a chain of consequences.
What “but” and “therefore” are testing
The useful thing about these words is the relationship they ask you to find. An event happens. Because it happened, the situation is different. That difference creates possibilities, problems, or consequences for what comes later.
You can put “but” between two unrelated events and still have two unrelated events. The work is figuring out how the scenes connect -- and what each one leaves behind for the story to deal with.
Try the Causal Chain Audit
Take a scene from your draft, or an outline developed enough that you can tell what happens. Then ask these three questions.
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What changed?
At the end of the scene, what is different? Someone might learn something, make a decision, lose a plan, or experience a change in a relationship. The change might also be in what the reader understands about a character.
Identify what the scene leaves behind. That change can matter later; it doesn’t have to cause the very next scene.
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Why now?
Why does this scene happen at this point in the story? Try explaining it with “therefore,” “but,” or “because.” What happened earlier that creates this event or gives the complication its meaning?
If the answer is mostly “this is where I wanted the cool sword fight,” you may have found a weak connection. Look for the change that gets the story there.
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Can I move it?
Try moving the scene, swapping it with another, or removing it. What would change elsewhere in the story?
If very little changes, investigate. The scene might belong somewhere else, need stronger setup, or work better combined with another scene. Being able to move it doesn’t automatically mean it’s bad.
These questions helped me get some footing on a principle I understood but struggled to apply. This is my current best approach. Try it against your own draft and use what you find to make a decision.
Example: Mara and the king’s ledger
Here’s the example I work through in the episode. The first version gives us events. The revision gives those events reasons and consequences.
| A stack of events | A chain of consequences |
|---|---|
| Mara steals the king’s ledger. | Mara steals the ledger and gains information the king wants back. |
| Then she visits her brother. | She takes it to her brother because he can interpret what it contains. |
| Then soldiers raid his house. | The king’s people trace her. Soldiers raid the house, and her brother is captured. |
| Then Mara escapes the city. | Her brother’s capture makes her abandon her plan to flee and stay longer. |
The revision changes why Mara visits her brother, what the raid costs her, and what she does next. Each scene leaves something behind that the following events have to deal with.
Mentioned in this episode
- Parker and Stone’s NYU writing-advice excerpt (opens in new tab) -- a YouTube reupload of a clip from mtvU’s Stand In.
- The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr (opens in new tab) -- the audiobook in which I encountered McKenna’s scene-connection idea.
- Aaron Sorkin’s “Rules of Story” MasterClass lesson (opens in new tab) -- part of the screenwriting course discussed in the episode. Course access may require a subscription.
- Poetics by Aristotle (opens in new tab) -- an online text in S. H. Butcher’s translation.
For a tool to decide what changes inside each scene, listen to and read How to Write a Scene That Earns Its Place.
Take the questions back to your draft
Choose a scene or a short run of scenes. Ask what changed, why each scene happens where it does, and what would break if you moved it. When you find a weak connection, look at what the earlier scene could leave behind for the later one to deal with.
Fiction Writer’s Toolshed: Practical Tools for Authors is a Make Exist podcast hosted by Tim Kearney. It offers hands-on training for fiction writers to diagnose writing problems, build their skills, and finish more work.