Once upon a time, you couldn’t tell a story straight.

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The problem might be that you began as a poet. That focus on a moment, an image, that impulse to seize a scene and squeeze it dry, or spend days with it under a microscope, or live with it for hours in a vanity mirror, ring light fully on. If it’s not clear by now: you will ride a metaphor into the sunset, on repeat.

The problem might be that you like to play. You like to wander, shake containers up. You walk around genres as if structures were a playground: This slide? This sandbox? This set of bars to climb? This tunnel to hide in?

I say problem because when it comes to writing long-form narrative with a story arc, or an argumentative thread, you flail.…