Just Ginger

Eight years ago I wrote a blog titled “The Ripple Effect in Storytelling.” Recently, I was reading a novel by a seasoned author who failed to remember the ripple effect. It was so disconcerting, I not only stopped reading the novel, I also decided it was time I revisited the topic. What’s the ripple effect, you ask? It’s the consequences that ripple out from story action. Imagine a pebble tossed into a pond, it hits the water and then ever widening ripples reach out to touch more area than the pebble itself touched. Instead of a pebble, think of a story element. For example, your main character is hiking through the woods and trips over a log and injures a shoulder. From that point forward, the injured shoulder must be included with that character until such time as the shoulder has healed. The hurt shoulder is the pebble. Rippling out from that injury are consequences: the pain, inability to use the shoulder as one should, wearing a brace, or other characters remarking on the inju...

I recently watched a TV show that featured a scene with the main character and a dog. It was a very cute scene, but even though the story remained in that setting, the dog never appeared again. Basically, they brought the dog on stage, had him do his part, and then forgot about him. Well, they had him go into a kennel with no door. As if that was going to keep him there while people traipsed around his home.  As a dog owner, I was quite bothered by the fact the dog basically disappeared. Although people came and went in this house, the dog was never seen or heard again. References were made that the home owner had a dog, had even worked with a companion dog program, but the dog itself made no other appearance. The script writers forgot about the ripple effect. What’s that, you ask? Well, once something is introduced into the story, it has consequences that ripple out. Imagine a pebble tossed into a pond, it hits the water and then ever widening ripples reach out to t...