Turbulence

Turbulence drives stories.  From the minor ripple of a family's youngest son going off to do their own thing in defiance of the family, to the start of an interstellar war, turbulence is at the heart of the action.

Tech can create massive turbulence in societies, something we humans haven't really recognized yet.  Just imagine how life and cultures will change when we can travel faster than light, or we invent the ansible for real.

Tech can allow people to create massive turbulence too.  In Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War series, pirate Gamis Turek steals ships and knocks out anisbles, creating turbulence in the lives of the systems he visits before striking against them.  In a short time the threat of piracy has solar systems locking out visiting ships and mistrusting people who have been long time friends,

In CJ Cherryh's The Pride of Chanur a fugitive runs onto Pyanfur's Chanur's ship, beaten and starved.  She reluctantly takes the creature in, and triggers off massive unrest between three species and between the families of her own species.

The turbulence a character creates by discovering the truth can be devastating.  In Scott Westerfeld's Uglies/Pretties/Specials series Tally discovers the terrible price that people pay for having  their bodies sculpted into beautiful shapes.  She and her friends subsequently leave the city, triggering a war that humans haven't seen for aeons.  In Sarah Crossan's Breathe, the characters have grown up knowing that they can't survive outside the atmosphere of the Pod, but when they escape they discover the truth about the way they've been controlled and things change for ever.

In my own novel Panthera : Death Spiral the death of three kingcat cubs together triggers Ren Hunter's realisation that the cats have been murdered.  That turbulence takes her half way across human space trying to save the cats.

Stories need turbulence to drive our characters to act, and the stronger the turbulence the stronger the story.