Halfway into the story:
- ❌ You can completely predict the rest. You “get it”, but you aren’t learning anything.
- ❌ You can’t predict ANY of it. You don’t get it, but you aren’t learning anything (because you aren’t building any successful model)
- ✅ You can predict enough of it to have strong guesses, which are sometimes broken. You are learning something!
Now, any schmuck can “do the unexpected” to break your model. An artist breaks your model in a way that makes you appreciate it, because you see something new now. Or it just felt good for w/e reason, even if you can’t consciously articulate why.
How to test your understanding with the author
You go the author and say, “X should have happened instead of Y”. They say:
- ❌ “No, that doesn’t make sense, here’s why”
- ❌ “Oh, yes I see that! That’s very different from what I was going for”
- ✅ “Woah, you’re right!” → changes it
Just because the author doesn’t see what you see in it doesn’t mean you’re wrong.
But if you’re right, you can find someone else who sees what you see, who can make the same predictions you make