- Start with an event, a cause. This cause will result in an incident, but don’t decide on the incident yet.
- the cause may be minor; Joe stops to look in the pet store window.
- the cause may be major; Joe drives his car through a red light.
- Determine a cause for that cause.
- Joe lost his transit pass and has to walk
- Determine a cause for that cause, perhaps bringing in additional characters
- Consider bland, normal reasons for believably or to heighten realism, or, consider strange, bizarre reasons for comedy, surrealism, generating interest, or, consider themes or parallel tracks or levels or mixing these
- Consider bringing in additional characters so you can create a new branch of incidents that will still tie into the ultimate incident. Someone close to the original character will make it easier to tie their effect back to the ultimate incident, but, they could also be strangers that fate has thrown together only they didn’t expect it until the incident occurs.