What is A Good Story?

A character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.

- from A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, a brilliant book by Donald Miller.

Here are some more of his perceptions, seemingly unrelated, but most probably not (like much of Donald Miller's writing!)....

"When you are born, you wake slowly to everything. Your brain doesn't stop growing until you turn twenty-six, so from birth to twenty-six, God is slowly turning the lights on, and you're groggy and pointing at things saying circle and blue and car and then sex and job and health care. The experience is so slow you could easily come to believe life isn't that big of a deal, that life isn't staggering. What I'm saying is I think life is staggering and we're just used to it. We all are like spoiled children no longer impressed with the gifts we're given - it's just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving in over the mountain, just another child being born, just another funeral."