The Writer's Cone of Probability

It's a concept I heard about some time ago and it certainly can be included in the basis of story telling for writers.

Think of it this way - any event, any happening you create for your story can be thought of as the smallest end of a cone - the rest of it, the ever broadening end of the cone extending out into the future. Sort of a writer's nirvana.

This allows for an infinite amount of events to be spawned or calved off from the original event - in fact, an ever-expanding array of...