The spectral hand passes through yours, then you both sink down through the floor. You find yourself alone in a long narrow underground space. There is no wind. A faint light pervades the mysterious corridor.
Story/Story - by David Kolb
The spectral hand passes through yours, then you both sink down through the floor. You find yourself alone in a long narrow underground space. There is no wind. A faint light pervades the mysterious corridor.
This is another node that abruptly pushes the reader into the maze. If the reader follows it to the end and doesn't go back, the set of branches outside the house will be missed.
We're presuming that readers are building a meta-story about their progress in reading the example story. That meta-story should be aware that what is being read is a tree to be explored, not one branch and a rush to the end.
Granted that's the self-related meta-story we hope the reader is building. But that doesn't guarantee that the reader will follow every branch. Especially if the branches have little interest or are repetitive.
That's one purpose of our dialogue on this side; it provides another lure for reading.
That means, though, that neither side is fully relying on the impulsion of plot to keep the reader interested. So what can be learned about stories?
This is a kind of academic performance, but there's an element of story on our side, too.
How?
We're dramatizing the search for the unavoidable meta-stories.