What caused it, really
Grow a sentence · 20 minutes · Published
Read this first
What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What were its causes? The historians tell us with naïve assurance that its causes were the wrongs inflicted on the Duke of Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the Continental System, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of Alexander, the mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on. Consequently, it would only have been necessary for Metternich, Rumyántsev, or Talleyrand, between a levee and an evening party, to have taken proper pains and written a more adroit note, or for Napoleon to have written to Alexander: “My respected Brother, I consent to restore the duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg”—and there would have been no war.
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1869). Translated by Aylmer Maude, 1923. Project Gutenberg #2600
The prompt
Take one event everyone around you has an explanation for, a break-up, a shop that closed, a lost match, and open with the bare question of what caused it. Then move through the steps in order: the causes people give, the contrary that shows they cannot be enough, a small scene in which one of those causes is imagined doing its work, and the conclusion you are left with. Each step gets its own paragraph and a plain first sentence.
Set a timer for 20 minutes.
Short version · 10 minutes
In ten minutes, write the question, the received causes, and the one contrary that undoes them.
The move
Grow a sentence. Start from a sentence, a maxim, a question, a fact, and develop it step by step: cause, contrary, example, scene.
Tags: argument and structure.
In a group
A way to run it with a writing group:
Two sides and a judge. Two teams write on the same subject and the texts are read against each other. A judge decides round by round and gives reasons.
Where the page goes next
Scrin is a home where pages grow into books: you keep writing, from an untitled line to a chapter, and Scrin keeps the rest.