Narrative Design and Narrative As Destiny
November 11, 2025·0 comments·zg
There’s a moment in any good story where you realize the end was inevitable all along.
Sometimes it’s a surprise, like a Tyler Durden twist (and that’s the mastery of Chuck Palahniuk), and other times it’s just the way the plot settles down into what we’re dreaming of, like a Vivian Ward real-world Cinderella story (and that’s the mastery of Garry Marshall).
A story needs to end. And an end simply needs to satisfy closing some loop on some idea from however it started. Any story that accomplishes this arc has done its job.
It’s all about the organization of beats along the way. How the little moments, presented from different perspectives, can make us feel like we know the characters, and their intentions, and their desires, and where it’s all going to land. It’s pretty. Really. Oh, pun intended, of course, like,
Vivian: People put you down enough, you start to believe it.
Edward Lewis: I think you are a very bright, very special woman.
Vivian: The bad stuff is easier to believe. You ever notice that?
Pretty Woman, Gary Marshall and J.F. Lawton
When David Foster Wallace, or Rusty Guinn, or Ben Hunt invokes story as “the water in which we swim,” they’re invoking the presence of beginnings and endings. Their invoking the magic by which most of those arcs disappear from our awareness because they’re how we talk about everything.
They’re the only way to make sense of the story beats, as they endlessly drip past us in a mostly boring fashion. It’s not paint drying but it’s soap making. You don’t care so long as you have soap in the shower (or bubbles in the bath).
You actually have to proactively step back and ask a question like, “Why am I reading this now” to break the spell we walk through life under.
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