We understand a story’s meaning, in part, by tracking its causality, and a story’s power stems from our sense that its causality is truthful, which is to say, that its internal logic is solid.
We understand a story’s meaning, in part, by tracking its causality, and a story’s power stems from our sense that its causality is truthful, which is to say, that its internal logic is solid.
Saved by Alex Dobrenko and
One good way to investigate what causes that feeling: experimentally truncate a good story before the point where its creator actually ended it. Just cut it off and observe your reaction to that imposed ending. The resulting feeling will tell us something about what’s missing. Or, conversely, about what the remaining text does supply, once we read
... See more(A linked pair of writing dictums: “Don’t make things happen for no reason” and “Having made something happen, make it matter.”)
We might think of structure as simply: an organizational scheme that allows the story to answer a question it has caused its reader to ask.
We could understand a story as simply a series of such expectation/resolution moments.
A story is an organic whole, and when we say a story is good, we’re saying that it responds alertly to itself.