Stories are the way that we make sense of the world; the wider process by which we construct those stories is known as sensemaking. When we engage in sensemaking we select the elements of experience to which we will pay attention, and we begin to link those experiences relationally: B happened because of A; if X, then Y.

Asking “Why?” is what burns through the fog, allowing you to envision your story’s cause-and-effect trajectory—clear, precise, and waiting for you to bring it to life. And the answer always lies in the past.

point to the following four principles, often summarized as the four Cs. The first C is causality, which means that events are causally related to one another. For example, “I saw Jane; I left the house” is just a chronological telling of events. But if you read, “I saw Jane, my hopeless old love; I left the house,” you would understand that the