The Eureka moment happened watching Luna Papa; 1999 movie directed by Bakhtyar Khudojnazarov, as a Russian, Tajikistan, Germany, Austria and France's collaboration. By the way, I was eating one of the few dishes I was able to cook then (without spoiling tomato broth or rice): diced tomatoes with boiled potatoes and canned tuna sprinkled with thyme over toasted tortillas (no, you for sure haven't even seen them).
WHAT HAPPENED IN THE MOVIE (you might prefer start reading here)
Mamlakat, a pregnant main character, meets a physician's trio buying blood... Illegally of course. Alikque, maybe not even a real physician, flirts with her among a police chase after them in the fake ambulance! Her father crashes his motor against the police patrol to get rid of them and save Mamlakat from going to jail.And that's it about this guy flirting with her. Until they meet again in a train, the fake physician about to be shot for cheating at poker. However, that comes later. For the moment, the storytelling distracts us by showing how much the inhabitants of Far Khor are outraged by the girl being visibly about to become a SINGLE mother. Which causes Mamlakat to run again from home... By train.Thus, she saves our guy from being shot, by saying he is the father of the big belly so he can't be killed because of gambling debts.
THE MILK IN THE FRIDGE RIGHT UNDER YOUR NOSE
Yes, I know. This is basic! Yet, sometimes, we have the milk under our nose in the fridge and we can't see it. We're too close or not in the right angle. Writing manuals can explain it with a surplus of examples and indeed, we fail to see it.
To turn causal into casual is like having a mouse at home. You haven't seen the damn rodent at all but you know it is there. How? Mice leave behind little round thingies— if you might not tolerate the word. They also leave nibbled cables/fabric/plastic, scraps of food and fiber balls behind them. Even the rain proof coat is susceptible to be eaten, besides the glue trap. There won't be the big smelly mud cake of cows…
None of the causal “facts” of our tale will be holding an "Acme bomb" tag. You won't see the mouse. You will see what's left behind.
And here I'm not sure if it is one of two ideas. Is it a bad story or a teenager story the one with a capybara jumping over you? I mean if after reading that Delilah Dreyfus, famous assassin, thinks: "It is impossible that they are in contact with the princess"; you can't deduce yourself, on your own, she is the princess and need more visible clues... Does that mean that you just lack experience or are you a person requiring books for dummies1—to tell the truth, once I tried one (grammar for dummies), it was so obscure and difficult to understand I gave up reading...
The mouse is there, we only need to be perceptive for good authors will leave behind cheese crumbs hidden among Quidditch games, pre marriage existential crisis, naked witches dancing. Anything that is unimportant, will happen and may never change the plot's going on. Anything to distract from the pure fact about to shatter casualty. Anything to hide the way dots connect has to be concealed by distraction.
In plainly good stories, the mouse can be seen but it is STILL a mouse and it will leave behind traces to look up for. Capybaras make stories too predictable. And even kids need a certain degree of thinking.
I hope you find this useful to think where to keep a mouse in your story. And if you ever decide to kill it, just do it a pain free way. Pasto kalo.
Intolerant question ahead; thinking requires fat burning and not many people likes burning fat (which is fine too) but is that why soap operas are so popular? ↩︎
