Why Is This Story Being Told?

If you have ever been in a writing workshop, especially of the MFA variety—and good for you if you haven’t—you are likely familiar with the most dreaded response a piece of writing can get. It can be phrased in a variety of ways, sometimes hedged and mealymouthed and sometimes forthrightly insulting, but it is essentially this: Why is this story is being told? It’s a curious criticism, one that invites responses that are escalatory and often epistemological in nature, for example: “Why should I care about your opinion?” or “Why is any story told?” or “Why do we bother doing anything?” This line of criticism, especially when it is directed at you and something you wrote, is maddening, both in its dismissiveness and in its unanswerability.

And yet it captures something about a lot of writing, even writing that is good, or “good”—well-considered, well-phrased, and well-paced. Lots of good writing has this inert, pointless quality, and sometimes otherwise amateurish, inept writing has a curious vibrancy. Whatever the