Inevitability

Time glimpse stories like A Christmas Carol employ the force of inevitability, straightforwardly requiring a character to reflect on their past and predict their future to revise their ongoing actions and decisions. Changes most often occur in the very near future with both immediate and cascading effects.

Time travel stories employ the force of inevitability disguised as the force of possibility. The story allows a character to rely on today’s emotions (like regret and fear) to revise the past or future. Changes can occur in any time and affect the entire timeline after the change.

Stories ring true when the force of inevitability gives the reader a sense that the story followed the only course it ever would have.

The CAC Method

Choice. Action. Consequence. CAC.

I didn’t invent CAC; see the vast array of applications online. At its root, CAC is simply an observation of how the world works. Choices and actions create consequences, and that cycle endlessly repeats.

Character’s Algorithm

Each character has a set of specifications that include individualities, commonalities, flaws, talents, backstory, motivations, goals, obstacles, relationships, and environment. The character’s algorithm can be used to calculate a character’s choices and actions within given conditions. The result of this calculation is inevitability.

Choice

Choice applies the character’s algorithm to the given conditions, including potential options and present circumstances. The result is the character’s inevitable choice.

Action

Action applies the character’s algorithm to given conditions, including choice, circumstances, and constraints. The result is the character’s inevitable action.

Consequence

Consequence applies the character’s choice and action to rest of the plot. Many consequences may present downstream, but the immediate consequence is always the next choice.

CAC Improves Story

Through-Line

CAC creates a compelling and inevitable through-line. Plots and arcs that aren’t built on CAC tend to be unnecessary to the story; cutting them changes nothing. Scenes that aren’t built on CAC tend to feature exposition and delay the plot.

Stakes

CAC transforms an account of events into a reader investment. Each choice, action, and consequence raises the stakes for the characters and invests the reader.

Tension

CAC builds tension between the reader and and story, between what the reader knows about the character and the character’s choices and actions. Writers capitalize on tension by withholding pieces of the character’s algorithm.

Characters & Subplots

The difference between main and minor characters is the magnitude of possible choices, actions, and consequences.

CAC anchors minor arcs and subplots to the main story. When minor characters make choices and take actions, they become three-dimensional. When those characters’ choices and actions result in consequences that impact the main character, they and their subplots become essential.

Pantsers & Plotters

CAC can be useful to any writer, including the many between pure pantsers (who do no pre-writing) and pure plotters (who extensively pre-write).

CAC leans into a plotter’s tendency to pre-write as they establish characters’ algorithms before the first choice. At the moment of the first choice, CAC pulls a plotter out of pre-writing and into writing.

Modified CAC leans into a pantser’s tendency to write first and backfill the characters’ algorithms during revisions, when some choices and actions must be realigned to make sense.

Writing with CAC

How to

As an outline or as a loose writing guide, CAC always:

• Begins with a first set of CACs and
• Requires each subsequent set of CACs to flow from the first.

A plotter might want to note the range of possible options and actions, as well as several downstream consequences. A pantser might not consider multiple possibilities or later impacts. However, both plotters and pantsers provide an immediate consequence that forces the next choice to be made within the scene and in the scene that follows.

Why to

If none of the arguments above motivate you to try CAC, let me suggest a different kind of motivation. Use CAC:

• To overcome writer’s hesitance;
• To break writer’s block; or
• To pull the story back to its essence.