Abstract

People often ask each other “what happens” in a novel or film, and they are inclined to think that some answers are better than others. Some claims about what happens in a story are deemed inaccurate or false, while others are the object of a fairly widespread consensus. The fact that a statement about a narrative discourse is deemed accurate does not mean that it will or should be accepted as an adequate statement about the story told in the discourse. If someone asks me what just happened in a movie, even the most prefect description of the cuts and camera angles will be deemed irrelevant.