Stories are patterns of causality

Tags: Writing Story Structure

According to George Saunders, every story is a pattern of causality. Each event in the story leads to the next in a sequence in a continual system of escalation.

Saunders' claim is reminiscent of the assertion attributed (apocryphally?) to Nabokov: that "The queen died, then the king died" is not a story, but "The queen died, then the king died of grief" is a story.

References


Saunders 2020