On Saturday night, my house hosted a birthday party for one of my roommates. (No, she's not a leap baby; it was just the weekend night closest to her birthday.) The theme was Grizzly Rose, a popular country-/Western-themed bar, nightclub, and dance hall in Denver. Among other preparations, we moved all the furniture out of our kitchen and onto our back deck to make room for dancing. Because our kitchen is so small, that furniture included a shelving unit on which I keep a lot of stuff, including some of my food.
Some of our guests stayed way later than we'd planned on, so it was after midnight when we started cleaning up. We were all tired and decided everything would be okay on the deck overnight.
That was a mistake.
When I got home from church the next day, I realized that we had company: the squirrel that likes to prowl around our deck. Remembering that I had some less-than-protected food (bread and cereal) on my shelves, I decided that the unit needed to come inside right then. It was too heavy for me to lift on my own, so I called one roommate out to help.
As we got into position, I realized that we were a bit too late. The dumb squirrel had chewed open my bread bag and gnawed on the loaf! I had to throw the whole thing away. Now I'm in the process of washing all the dishes that were on the shelves because I don't know what else the squirrel might have touched.
Lesson learned!
This kind of thing happens in writing, too. While it may not involve squirrels ruining your sandwich material, both fictional characters and real people often encounter unexpected consequences to their actions:
In late 1941, the Japanese had actually planned to end negotiations with the United States, effectively declaring war, just before attacking Pearl Harbor. However, their timing was off, and the Americans were outraged by what they understandably saw as an underhanded sneak attack. A desire for revenge likely played a role in the later atomic bombing of Japan.
When Bilbo Baggins takes the Ring and spares Gollum's life in The Hobbit, it sets in motion the events that eventually cause the Ring's destruction.
As writers, we need to be on the lookout for unexpected consequences and take them into account in our work. This is particularly true in persuasive writing, in which our job is to convince skeptical and undecided readers that the consequences of adopting our viewpoint are worth it.
Unexpected consequences are also useful fodder for plot twists and complications in fiction. If all seems lost and an outside character suddenly turns up to save the day, it feels like cheating. But if the protagonist was kind to a minor character earlier in the story, it makes sense why this person would render aid later. Conversely, if the protagonist ticks off someone important or does something else unwise, it makes sense that that choice would later come back to bite them (bonus points if it happens at the worst possible time).
This is not to say that we need to imagine every possible consequence for every action and plan for how to deal with all of them. That would be impossible, not to mention time-consuming! But we do need to think beyond the consequences we desire or the ones that are most obvious. It's the unexpected that gets both characters and writers into trouble.
Write on,
Candice
(Thanks to Külli Kittus for sharing their work on Unsplash.)
Comments