"What makes a good story?"

One of the articles I read today (McCabe & Peterson, 1984) was pretty interesting. They had a bunch of kids tell various stories about things that had happened to them, picked the longest story from each kid, and then scored them on three measures: a measure of how well they matched a conventional story structure (with a problem, a resolution, and a conclusion), a measure of having emotional peaks, and a measure of complexity and elaborative detail. Then they had people rate how "good" the stories seemed to them. In most cases, being a "good" story led to high scores on at least two of the measures. Not necessarily, though.

I was so productive today that I rewarded myself with swimming/playing in the pool with D, rather than reading more papers at poolside. Unfortunately, I've been a bit motion-sick ever since. I went back to the tiny patch of meadow at the playground and took wildflower pictures, though.