The Queen died, and then the king died

From A Swim in the Pond by George Saunders

"The queen died, and then the kind died." (E. M. Forster's famous formulation) describes two unrelated events occurring in sequence. It doesn't mean anything. "The queen died, and the king died of grief" puts those events into relation: we understand that one caused the other. The sequence, now infused with causality, means: "That king really loved his queen."

Causality is to the writer what melody is to the songwriter: a super-power that the audience feels as the crux of the matter; the thing the audience actually shows up for; the hardest thing to do; that which distinguishes the competent practitioner from the extraordinary one.

A well-written bit of prose is like a beautifully hand-painted kit, lying there on the grass. It's nice. We admire it. Causality is the wind that then comes along and lifts it up. The kite is then a beautiful thing made even more beautiful by the fact that it's doing what it was made to do.