Change, cause & effect

Here's a snippet from Furia, but we've cut one sentence so that it no longer makes sense.

What's wrong with it? Where do you think we've made the cut?

Why did stars explode in the narrator's eyes? We don't know, they come out of nowhere.

Why does she fall on the ground? Who knows? She just does! 🤷‍♀️ 

This is what we call a break in cause and effect.

What might fill that gap?

Here's a guess:

What do you think? Plausible? Could you come up with something else?

Copy this text into the textbox below and insert one sentence to show how the narrator might have gotten hurt:

I joined the defense to make a protective wall in front of Roxana as the blond Royal captain got ready to shoot. She glanced over at her coach, then at me. At one meter and fifty-five centimeters, I was the shortest person on my team. She'd try to send it over my head. I was her only opening.

Stars exploded in my eyes as I fell hard on the ground, where I stayed, catching my breath.

"Hassan, do you need a sub?" Coach Alicia called from the sidelines.

How did you go?

Let's compare what you wrote to the original snippet, with the missing sentence restored.

Now we know why she fell with exploding stars: she jumped to intercept the ball and got hit in the face.

Stories are about cause and effect

Stories are about events that are connected in some way: one thing causes another, which causes another, and so on.

If readers can follow this chain of cause and effect, the story 'makes sense'. If they can't, then the story will feel like it doesn't make sense.

The gap in the Furia snippet was pretty obvious.

Let's look at a more subtle example.