The beauty of this story is the way Karen builds the stakes. With each added detail, the stakes change and turn and elevate. Like a roller coaster, the action rises; you climb up the track click by click. She is creating and playing with the tension the listener feels, and she uses the tension to pull us through, until the moment we find out what ultimately happens. If she hadn’t successfully built up the stakes, it would have just been a story about sleeping through an alarm clock—which, ultimately, it is—but the stakes invest us in the outcome.
