Two structural elements drive the twin missions of an explanatory narrative. The action line creates its overall shape, moving the advancing narrative through time and space. It draws readers into the narrative by exploring new places, introducing new people, and creating mild dramatic tension, if only because the reader doesn’t know what will happen next. But digressions provide the actual explanation, placing the action line in some larger context. Action takes place on the lower rungs of the ladder of abstraction, where emotion rules. Explanation takes place farther up the ladder, where
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