Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48248
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48248
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Panics have deep roots. They don't come out of the blue. They arise out of our need to make sense of our lives, to find patterns in randomness. Pattern finding is how our brains work, and it serves us well most of the time. But faced with a series of unexplained events, we seek connections, and when a particular event suggest a connection, our brains latch on to it and we start to see connections everywhere.

One story of a dragon stealing a sheep gets the shepherd laughed at. But if then it gets connected to a bunch of other disappearances, it starts to become a pattern. You have part of that already, as subsequent events are attributed to the dragon. But you need to extend it into the past as well. You need to establish the events that are going to coalesce into a pattern when the dragon report comes in.

This is really just another aspect of foreshadowing. Stories are a function of our pattern-seeking brains. That is why stories are neater, simpler, and more focussed than ordinary life. They are part of how our brains make sense of our existence. Virtually anything can be made acceptable in a story if it fits a pattern that you have established by foreshadowing.

(To be clear, in your case, it is the panic that has to be foreshadowed, not the dragon snacking.)

Original score: 7