Writing Backwards: Plot Construction Using Reverse Cause and Effect

by Jeffrey Kitchen | Published September 30, 2007

(Page 2)

Object: Jake defeats Alonzo, completes his training, and emerges as a powerful new man.
Final Effect: Alonzo is executed by the Russians and Jake goes home.
Immediate cause: Jake takes Alonzo’s million dollars as evidence.
Cause: Jake defeats Alonzo in the fight with some help from the locals in the neighborhood.
Cause: Jake drops onto Alonzo’s car, and Alonzo gets stunned smashing the car around trying to shake Jake off.
Cause: Alonzo beats the stuffing out of Jake and tries to leave.
Cause: Jake tries to arrest Alonzo and a gunfight erupts.
Cause: Jake goes to Alonzo’s girlfriend’s home to confront Alonzo.

Though the chain of events continues back to the beginning of the movie, this short section illustrates what reverse cause and effect looks like. The audience watches this playing forward, seeing a tight sequence of events. Jake tries to arrest Alonzo and seize the money, which causes Alonzo to beat the living daylights out of him and head out to pay the Russians, which causes Jake to drop onto Alonzo’s car in a desperate attempt to stop him, which causes Alonzo to get stunned when he smashes his car around trying to knock Jake off, which causes Jake to punch Alonzo out and be able to grab the money, which causes the locals to see that the loathsome Alonzo is weakened, which causes them to help Jake, which causes Jake to be able to defeat Alonzo, which causes Jake to be able to leave with the money as evidence that Alonzo robbed and murdered Roger, which causes Alonzo to be executed by the Russians when he shows up without it, which causes Jake to be able to go home free, his training completed—now a powerful, honest cop.

Let’s say we’re developing a script about a dad who’s trying to make amends with his daughter after seeing the two of them grow apart. In one part of the script, he kidnaps an umpire who blew a crucial call in his daughter’s championship little league game, and forces the umpire to admit that he was wrong and apologize to the team. As part of the reverse cause and effect of the overall story, we would have the following brief section:

Cause: The umpire sincerely apologizes to the whole team.
Cause: The umpire realizes how bad his call was and how much it meant to the kids.
Cause: The dad forces the umpire to watch a tape of the game.
Cause: The dad kidnaps the umpire.
Cause: The umpire blows the call badly, and is a total jerk about it. The team loses the championship and the kids are devastated.

Remember that we’re looking at just one section of the whole story, and all I’ve done is sketch the basic steps in broad terms. Reverse cause and effect is a plot construction tool. To develop the story further you need to think things through in more detail. How and where does the dad snatch the umpire? How crazy is the dad? How does he keep the umpire from pressing charges? How does he get through to the umpire in order to make him really understand and apologize? We want to keep it simple and develop the particulars gradually as they become necessary.

Now let’s go back through this above section, amplifying the story and weaving in more specifics as we would do if we were developing detail for part of one of the acts in this screenplay. Notice that I’m not only expanding on the story, but I’m linking it all together with cause and effect.

Cause: The umpire apologizes genuinely to the kids and they accept it.
Cause: The umpire realizes just how bad his call really was.
Cause: The dad shows him the play and his call from different angles.
Cause: The dad ties the umpire to a chair and makes him watch the game video repeatedly.
Cause: The dad kidnaps the umpire from his job as a crossing guard.
Cause: The kids are devastated, and the dad realizes he can make his daughter feel better.
Cause: The umpire sticks to his call, being quite cruel to the kids in the process, and they lose the championship game.
Cause: The umpire makes a really lousy call which will cost the kids the big game. Their coach protests vehemently.

Now we’ll take this section of the act, known as a sequence (there are two to five sequences in an act, and two to five scenes in a sequence), and do reverse cause and effect for it. Because we’re dealing with an entire sequence we’ll start out by stating the object of the sequence. Then we’ll state the final effect that demonstrates that object on-screen with real actors, followed by its immediate cause. We’ll then chain backwards through the rest of the causes, to the beginning of the sequence, again expanding on the detail and keeping it all stitched together with cause and effect.

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