I have been thinking a lot about story. Not the stories that are contained in our books, but the stories that are contained in our lives.
What makes a story great?
Is the life that we (librarians) are living a page-turning story? Or is it a story we would get bored reading?
Humans naturally seek comfort and stability. Without an inciting incident that disrupts their comfort, they won’t enter into a story. They have to get fired from their job or be forced to sign up for a marathon. A ring has to be purchased. A home has to be sold. The character has to jump into the story, into the discomfort and the fear, otherwise the story will never happen.
-Robert McKee
Or
You don’t know a story is happening to you when you’re in it. You slide into the flow of it like a current in the ocean; you look back at the beach and can’t see the umbrella, and your hotel is a quarter mile behind you.
-Donald Miller
What makes a great story?
Fear?
Conflict?
Hard work?
Adversity?
As part of my reflective journey, I want to make sure that I live out an intentional page-turning story. I also want to make sure that my story intersects with your story. So I want to thank you for being part of my story.
The Information Activist Librarian 
I have been thinking a lot about this post. Story is distillation. It’s looking at what the storyteller gives you. It can’t be the whole of reality (even the whole of imagined reality).
So, maybe story seems problematic when you don’t have obvious fear, conflict, hard work or adversity because the distillation is far more complicated.
I don’t know that a great story needs page-turning, white-knuckle, drama to be great. Small gestures might be enough. Madeleine crumbs in a cup of tea could get the whole story moving. You could be bounded in a nutshell and still count yourself a king of infinite space.
There was a story on NPR many years ago by CBC broadcaster Ian Brown about monogamy. He was lamenting to his wife that maybe monogamy was like never traveling to Istanbul. His wife suggested that maybe monogamy *was* Istanbul.
Maybe, in the absence of any high drama, the story is unfolding all around us?