came across this while reading the philosopher jonathan wolff

plot: the chronological order in which events occur

story: the order in which events are revealed to the reader

wolff puts forward the view (not claiming it's his own or even very new) that "good writing captures its reader by means of creating a tension between the plot and the story"

obvious large scale examples are mystery (events essential to the plot are deliberately withheld from the story) and suspense (anticipation of future events that could follow from what is revealed), but the rule can be applied on a smaller scale, for example to dialogue or even sentence construction

he then applies this rule to academic writing, saying a detective novel written by a good philosophy student would begin: "In this novel I shall show that the butler did it." and laments that good academic writing is of necessity, in this sense, boring

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marzipan marzipan marzipan marzipan

yeah, that's true, and actually kind of funny because when i write academic papers, i usually don't even come to what ends up being my real thesis until waaaay late in the process. then i have to rearrange things so that it reads more academic. but the natural tendency is to discover gradually what the hell it is i'm talking about.

I used to try and make my introductions so that people would want to read my essay to find something out, but learnt at uni that's apparently completely wrong. It's horrible having to say 'I will conclude...', and made worse by the fact that the english department want you to write in a slightly different way. Often it's tempting to put some character into my philosophy writing, but I'm never sure how that will go down with the marker.

He sounds interesting. I will have to look him up after my exams thoughh, I think.