Jennifer Crusie

Sarah Palin resigned from her governorship about six hours ago, effectively dumping the news in the dead zone of Friday night before the fourth of July. I will leave it to others to determine the political implications of that; what fascinates me is the speculation her announcement is generating. Because as everybody is saying, there’s got to be more story there.

I believe that as human beings, we need story. We crave it. We take the random events of the day and arrange them into a pleasing narrative so that the day makes sense as a whole. We take isolated incidents and embroider them with commentary and invest them with meaning and they too become stories with clear themes. But it isn’t just that we need events to make sense; we need them to satisfy our hunger for drama, for surprise and reversal and climax. A story isn’t enough, it has to be a good story.

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