Here’s a little Friday wisdom on moving your stories along from one of my favorite writers, [George Saunders](http://www.saunderssaunderssaunders.com/). It’s from “The Perfect Gerbil,” a piece from his essay series [The Braindead Megaphone](http://kottke.org/07/09/the-braindead-megaphone).
I think this advice applies all kinds of story-telling–even writing for your website.
When I was a kid I had one of these Hot Wheels devices designed to look like a little gas station. Inside the gas station were two spinning rubber wheels. One’s little car would weakly approach the gas station, then be sent forth by the spinning rubber wheels to take another lap around the track, or more often, fly out and hit one’s sister in the face.
A story can be thought of as a series of these little gas stations. The main point is to get the reader around the track; that is, to the end of the story. Any other pleasures a story may offer (theme, character, moral uplift) are dependent on this…
So if the writer can put together enough gas stations, of sufficient power, distributed at just the right places around the track, he wins: the reader works his way through the full execution of the pattern, and is ready to receive the end of the story.
