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 this mysterious corridor.

You turn and walk to the right.

You turn and walk to the left.

This is another node that abruptly pushes the reader into the maze branch. 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 the reades are building a meta-story about their progress reading of the example story. That meta-story is aware that what is being read is a tree to be explored, not one branch to rush to the end of.

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 they 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 our search for the intrinsic meta-story.