Causal Complexity

Terry Pratchett once wrote that in the cosmic bathtub of life, love is as difficult to find as the soap, and significantly harder to hold onto; causation might be even harder to grasp.  We wrote a little about this in our post about differentiating between correlation and causation, but it bears emphasizing, and a recent discussion I had about the role of chance in our lives prompted me to revisit the concept.  In particular, the discussion started me thinking about the role of chance and causation in narrative.

The discussion in question revolved around the notion of causal complexity.  In the hard sciences, it is possible to establish clear, singular, definitive causation.  A leads to B because of X.  In the softer sciences, this becomes far more difficult to establish in a concise fashion with any certitude.  Particularly in psychology and sociology, causation is almost impossible to prove, but we as humans still want to be able to point to one, or even a handful, of things and say, “those things led to that outcome.”  Perhaps more importantly, we want to be able to say that those things will always lead to that outcome.  Indeed, that desire may be one of the causes for the enduring popularity of self-help books and similar texts, which purport to describe a path by which anyone will achieve a given outcome.  We want to be able to control outcomes, and that means understanding and manipulating causes.

Of course, it’s not that simple.  The universe of systems of which we are a part is far too interconnected and complex to reduce the compound outcomes in which we are interested to a solvable, definable, multivariate system.  We might try to say that we are one way because of some single thing in the past, or perhaps a handful, but even if true for one particular characteristic, that traces only a single step in a long chain of interwoven causes and effects.  Our best understanding of causation produces a shadow on the wall of a cave, at best, and if we continue the allusion to Plato’s allegorical subterranean environment, the third dimension which we cannot probe is what we call chance.

Chance is not really a cause, of course.  It’s more like an omission.  When we ascribe something to chance, it’s a shorthand to express that we don’t understand, can’t identify, or can’t distinguish the actual causes involved.  This is not to say that there is no such thing as true randomness – quantum physics suggests that randomness, or noise, if you prefer, is intrinsic to the functioning of the universe – but that is not how chance is typically invoked.  Quantum randomness is not the reason you ran five minutes late on the way to work and therefore missed being involved in a car accident.

I know many people who have stories about how, because their kid was sick, or they were running late to work, they missed being in the World Trade Center or the Pentagon on 9/11, even some who happened to have a meeting in a different part of the building from where the plane impacted.  Significant events like these highlight the role chance can play, though it is no more or less at work in such instances than it is any other time.  As humans, though, we want there to be an explanation, a reason.  It is no wonder that chance, fate, and related concepts appear so often in religion and mythology, and belief in fate or a kind of active chance transcends determined nonbelief and skepticism of traditional religious concepts.

The simple fact is that we cannot plumb the true complexity of the causes of all the effects in our lives, and we certainly cannot control for all factors.  But this post is not just to emphasize that basic point.  Chance, and understanding the complexity of causation, has relevance to storytelling.  Since chance is such an integral part of our reality, stories that don’t allow and account for its role will feel contrived.  The most obvious place to see this fumble is in backstories.  Whenever the time comes to tell a backstory, the temptation is to explain every little distinguishing detail about the character and make them all fit into a cohesive tale.  The Solo movie is an example of how not to do this.  It fell flat because it attempted to pack every single distinguishing element about a complex character into a single adventure, as if the titular character had no other formative experiences throughout the rest of his life.

The opening scene of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade does a much better job.  Well, it’s helped along a lot by the fact that it’s sort of supposed to be campy.  But, it also doesn’t try to explain every single thing about Indiana Jones.  We get a few key elements, and hints at others, but the backstory doesn’t try to explain the whole character.  There’s more to Jones than this one incident.  It is emblematic, not comprehensive, and it ties to the main story being told in multiple ways.

As the author, you have control over chance in your story.  In a very real sense, you are the mysterious weaver of fate for your characters and the events they experience, and the nature of chance is such that some entirely implausible things could in fact happen.  Of course, if too many “random chances” align for the characters, that will come across as unrealistic, too.  Often, we call that “plot armor.”  Sure, it’s entirely possible that all those bullets could miss and all those highly competent individuals somehow miss seeing the hiding character, but at some point it becomes unbelievable.

Even if I weren’t in the midst of reading Wheel of Time, it would be neglectful not to mention Jordan’s brilliant Ta’veren mechanism in a post about causation and chance in storytelling.  The nature of his whole world’s cosmology/mythology allows him to play with chance and fate in fascinating ways that would be impossible (or at least very difficult) to get away with convincingly in any other story.  The narrative explicitly conveys that Ta’veren mess with chance, bringing one in a million odds to reality.  I can’t think of a way to generalize the tool to other writing, though, so as fascinating as it is, and as useful a concept it is to explore, it’s not necessarily something you can apply directly to your own writing.

In truth, chance probably isn’t something you need to incorporate deliberately into your writing.  If you’re observant of the world, and write your stories with that understanding in mind, you will naturally incorporate the twists and turns of chance into your plot.  For most people (myself included), the danger is in thinking too hard and deliberately about the plot, which can make it begin to seem engineered.  Like a puppet, you want to make the story seem alive without revealing the author’s hand manipulating it.  Though sometimes, as in the real world, the hand of fate can seem a little more overt.