Adjusting to circumstances

Let's look at one more complicated example, with intricate dependencies.

With the summer came Peter to tutor me, a tall, handsome young man, fresh from Oxford, with decided ideas on education which I found rather trying to begin with. But gradually the atmosphere of the island worked its way insidiously under his skin, and he relaxed and became quite human.

My Family and Other Animals(1956)

This snippet has two sentences, and together they describe the process of somebody arriving in a new situation, initially not fitting in, but then adjusting to circumstances.

This chain of cause and effect is made clear with four connectors:

With
Which
But
And

The details of the cause and effect are quite intricate:

With one event (summer), another event happened (Peter arrived) which had the following impact (the narrator found it rather trying).

But over time something else happened (the island worked its way under his skin), and caused a change (he became quite human).

With Elena's shiny new profile came a toxic sludge of online trolling which she found horrifying and depressing at first. But Nidhi said, "I'm your social media manager now," and she shielded Elena from the worst of it and let her enjoy the best.

With the win at state came the pressure to compete at nationals, which caused a lot of grumbling from parents who had to do even more drop-offs and pick-ups and homework negotiations with teachers. But eventually they acclimatised to the new routine, and everyone began to get excited about the prospect of a victory.

You might notice the examples use slightly different combinations of connectors.

You can play around too, but write a variation that uses each of the four connectors at least once.

Imagine an event that could cause a change in circumstances.
Then describe how something happens to help characters adjust to the change.

Describe a character or characters adjusting to new circumstances, using all four connectors.

Change, cause & effect

Adjusting to circumstances