In 2007, literary theorist Stanley Fish published an editorial in the New York Times that answers just that question. He was rushing through an airport with only minutes to spare and nothing to read. He decided to dash into the bookstore and choose a book based solely on its first sentence. Here is the winner, from Elizabeth George’s What Came

As John Irving once said, “Whenever possible, tell the whole story of the novel in the first sentence.”12

Do we know whose story it is?

We are always looking for the why beneath what’s happening on the surface.

Elmore Leonard famously said that a story is real life with the boring parts left out.

Can we glimpse enough of the “big picture” to have that all-important yardstick? It

Is there a sense that “all is not as it seems

a good story doesn’t feel like an illusion. What it feels like is life. Literally.

When a story meets our brain’s criteria, we relax and slip into the protagonist’s skin, eager to experience what his or her struggle feels like, without having to leave the comfort of home.