November 9, 2025
The Difference Between Argument and Story
An argument tells readers what to think.
A story lets readers witness what choices do to people.
When I forget that distinction, the prose stiffens immediately. I care deeply about ideas, but ideas only matter in fiction when they pass through character and consequence. The question is never whether a position sounds clever; it is whether a person can live with it.
This discipline has made me a better editor of my own drafts.
Whenever a page starts sounding like a lecture, I ask, who is paying for this idea in lived terms?
Clive