“I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.”
Indeed, readers, writers, filmmakers, game designers, illustrators and other practitioners of art and design that rely on narrative design and story, (even those we don’t readily consider dependent on narrative, like musicians, fashion designer or architects) take for granted their limited understanding of story as something with a beginning, middle and end, as being all there is to know about this plastic form, this universal means of organizing and transmitting experience.
In understanding a story it’s imperative that we define and distinguish story from things it might resemble. The difference, for example, between “Story” and “Narrative” is often misunderstood.
