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What Do You Actually Want From a Story?

People who love the same story often love it for reasons that have nothing to do with each other. Three questions come apart underneath the argument: whether you want the world to be one you could live in, whether you want the ending to decide something, and whether you want the telling to be invisible or to be the point.

Thirty-six statements, about six minutes, and a point inside a cube. Answer for anything with a story in it — a novel, a film, a season, a game — and answer for what you seek out rather than what happens to be on.

36 questions

Answered 0 of 36

  1. 1 I would rather a story make me work out how it is put together.
  2. 2 Discomfort at the end of a story is a sign it did its job.
  3. 3 Once the rules of a world stop being the rules of ours, I stop taking it seriously.
  4. 4 Doing a familiar thing perfectly is harder than doing an unfamiliar thing adequately.
  5. 5 I want to be shown a place I could not have pictured for myself.
  6. 6 A story that breaks its own shape has earned my attention.
  7. 7 The stories that stay with me are the ones I could not resolve.
  8. 8 I have lost interest in a story at the point where it stopped being possible.
  9. 9 I have kept going with something mostly to see more of the world it had built.
  10. 10 I like a story that refuses to be easy to follow.
  11. 11 I lose interest in a story once anything at all can happen in it.
  12. 12 When somebody in a story has done something terrible, I want the story to say so.
  13. 13 I would rather be shown a new way to tell a story than a new story.
  14. 14 The impossible parts are the parts I remember.
  15. 15 I want a story to land somewhere by the end.
  16. 16 I have given up on a story because working out what it was doing was more trouble than it was worth.
  17. 17 I want a story to show me something the world cannot.
  18. 18 Being lost for a while is part of what I am there for.
  19. 19 I want a story to carry me rather than to be assembled by me.
  20. 20 Technique that draws attention to itself is getting in the way.
  21. 21 An ordinary life has more room in it than the end of the world does.
  22. 22 The most interesting things that happen to people happen at kitchen-table scale.
  23. 23 A story that leaves everything open has ducked the hard part.
  24. 24 I want the people in a story who deserved something to get it.
  25. 25 I have argued with somebody about whether a story's ending was fair.
  26. 26 A story told in the obvious order is usually the better version of it.
  27. 27 I would rather a story be about something that could happen to me.
  28. 28 A story that could only have happened in real life has given up one of the two things stories can do.
  29. 29 I am comfortable not knowing what a story meant.
  30. 30 The bigger the thing a story is reaching for, the more I am in.
  31. 31 I want a story to give me somewhere to put what it made me feel.
  32. 32 The stories worth having are the ones that keep the argument going after they end.
  33. 33 I would rather leave a story unsettled than satisfied.
  34. 34 I would rather a storyteller stayed out of the way of the story.
  35. 35 A story that is hard to get into is usually worth the trouble.
  36. 36 A story that refuses to tell me who was right is doing something the others cannot.