Learning from experience

The word 'since' can locate a cause in the past.

For example, what effect did the warren of snares have on these rabbits?

Since leaving the warren of the snares they had become warier, shrewder, a tenacious band who understood each other and worked together. There was no more quarreling. The truth about the warren had been a grim shock. They had come closer together, relying on and valuing each other's capacities. They knew now that it was on these and on nothing else that their lives depended, and they were not going to waste anything they possessed between them.

Watership Down(1972)

Did the warren of snares make the rabbits more wary?

Maybe not: they could have become more wary because of all sorts of hardships since leaving the warren.

But there's one sentence in particular that tells us that the time in the warren was the cause: "The truth about the warren had been a grim shock."

This sentence, describing emotional impact, clarifies why the past experience caused the current situation.

Consider this sentence:

Since winter, I've increased my training.

Did winter make me start training? Maybe? Maybe not? Maybe the two are related by timing, but one didn't cause the other.

However:

Since the competition was announced, I've increased my training.

This feels different. Reading this version, we assume that the announcement caused the increase in training.

The point is that context matters

'Since' establishes a relationship in time, and the content and context tells us whether there is also a cause and effect relationship.

Since getting this job Elena had become a gun at raising money. She was no longer squeamish about it or resistant to the grind. The battle royale of research funding was enough to scare her straight. Now she embraced the chance to write a proposal, seeing them as much a part of her science as the field and lab work, and she spent a lot of time teaching the research assistants how to do it too.

Since the accident Tom had begun to accept that he might not go pro. He wasn't as sad or hopeless as he had expected to feel. But the surgeon's advice had been clear. His ACL would heal eventually, but it wouldn't be the same. There was a good chance he'd tear it again, and after the second time he'd be out of competitive soccer for good. He wasn't going to stop playing; he'd take the risk. But now he found himself thinking a lot more about what it would be like to be a cop.

You can see that connectors help us, but they often don't do the whole job; context and inference are important too.

To write your own variation:

Imagine something in the recent past that could have an affect your character, whether positive, negative, or just different.
Introduce the past event with 'since'—
Then immediately describe the change in the character.
Expand on your description, and somewhere in the expanded description include a sentence or statement that clarifies why the past had this effect on the present.

Describe a how a character has changed since a past event, and along the way clarify how the past caused the present.

Change, cause & effect

Learning from experience