Okay, But Why?

(Post by Kirsten)

We've reached the end of our (short) road today, as this is the last of my spring break (and so the last of my spring break writing blog posts). I hope you've enjoyed writing with this blog over the last two weeks, and also that you have come away from the experience with some new work, some motivation to keep writing, and some inspiration to experiment on the page in the future.

This last post is--as promised--the third part of a three-part series of prompts. In the first part of this series of prompts, I asked you to think about character; yesterday I asked you to think about setting; and today, as you've likely guessed, I'm going to ask you to think about plot.

Plot is, to be honest, the most difficult part of story-writing for me. It often falls together after I have a clear sense of character and setting, and it's not at all unusual for me to have written a nearly full first draft before I really know what I want from my plot. Plot, it's important to note, is not just a string of a events, but a string of causal events. Not just what happens in a story, but why those things happen, and why they happen in the order they do. Plot is about relationship. If you're interested in reading more, I recommend this article by Emily Barton.

Today's exercise is, then, about exploring the causal relationship between events.

Here are the three events I'm posing for you to consider:

1. A boy finds a bicycle along the side of an otherwise vacant road.

2. A woman appears at the door of a stranger's house.

3. A massive murmuration of starlings diverges from its usual migratory pattern and is spotted thousands of miles off course, flying in intricate patterns over a field. (Here's an article and video about what that looks like and why it happens.)

Now write the connections between these events. How are they related?

Have fun, stay home, and be well, spring break writers -- and please feel free to share your spring break writing in the comments to this post.