a story is whatever someone finds entertaining—which could be, well, anything. Not very helpful for writers, is it? But there is one thing those British scholars got right: stories must indeed entertain, just like food has to taste good, otherwise no matter how nutritious it is, it gets shoved to the back of the fridge, next to the container of moldering kale. If novels didn’t entertain us, we wouldn’t pay attention to them, and they’d molder unread on the shelf.
