Happy Tuesday!
This week’s writing prompt, featured in Monday’s newsletter, was inspired by a video of a gynecologist explaining the difference between correlation and causation—a concept that’s often misunderstood and misused in shaping public opinion and policy in the U.S.
While the video’s core message is serious, one example stood out: the correlation between shark attacks and ice cream sales. It’s attention-grabbing, funny, and oddly perfect for storytelling.
Sometimes, even in dark periods, a spark of inspiration can lead not just to serious exploration and discussion, but also to a break from heaviness—a light-hearted stretch of the imagination.
✨ Inspiration Prompt: Correlation isn’t causation—but it sure makes a good story.
Did you know shark attacks and ice cream sales both spike in summer?
Coincidence? Absolutely.
Causation? Not quite.
But the pattern is seductive—and dangerous when misunderstood.
And maybe, just maybe, someone is behind the screen painting the mice to make the experiments work.
This week’s prompt invites you to explore the tension between correlation and causation—the seductive power of patterns, the danger of assumptions, and the emotional fallout when we mistake one for the other.
🧠 What happens when patterns deceive us?
We live in a world overflowing with data but starving for understanding.
People see two things happen together and assume one caused the other.
Fear spreads. Certainty calcifies.
A coincidence becomes a conspiracy.
A trend becomes a truth.
A symptom becomes a scapegoat.
This prompt is your invitation to interrogate the illusion of cause—and the human need to make meaning, even when the dots don’t connect.
✍️ Try exploring:
- A character who builds their life around a false belief rooted in a misinterpreted pattern—or one who manipulates statistics to justify a personal or political agenda.
- A society that spirals into fear from imagined connections—or a world where every coincidence is treated as divine causation.
- A scientist, artist, or mystic haunted by ambiguity.
- A visual piece that plays with misleading graphs, painted mice, or absurd experiments.
- A poetic representation of data that tells two conflicting stories.
- A collage or graphic narrative that juxtaposes real-world headlines with imagined consequences.
Create in any form: fiction, poetry, nonfiction, scripts, songs, graphic narratives, collages, or other art forms.
And have fun unraveling the stories we tell ourselves when we mistake patterns for truth.
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