A story is an organic whole, and when we say a story is good, we’re saying that it responds alertly to itself. This holds true in both directions; a brief description of a road tells us how to read the present moment but also all the past moments in the story and all those still to come.

Or imagine we’re bouncers, roaming through Club Story, asking each part, “Excuse me, but why do you need to be in here?” In a perfect story, every part has a good answer. (“Well, uh, in my subtle way, I am routing energy to the heart of the story.”)

A story is a frank, intimate conversation between equals. We keep reading because we continue to feel respected by the writer. We feel her, over there on the production end of the process, imagining that we are as intelligent and worldly and curious as she is. Because she’s paying attention to where we are (to where she’s put us), she knows when we are “expecting a change” or “feeling skeptical of this new development” or “getting tired of this episode.” (She also knows when she’s delighted us and that, in that state, we’re slightly more open to whatever she’ll do next.)

It’s quite beautiful. The story has increased its meaning into its very last line, and even into the white space afterward. As we’ve said good endings do, this one creates an entire future world of different, plausible possibilities.

But that’s really all a story is: a series of things that happen in sequence, in which we can discern a pattern of causality.