Life, with a capital L, doesn't really have a beginning, middle or end, you are right, lady. But individuals' lives are made up of episodes, a little like a tamed-down soap-opera, and some of these episodes are worthy of note. All a story is, is the writing of an episode (real or imagined) that captures the imagination in some way. These almost invariably have beginnings and endings, and allow us to insight into similar episodes in our own lives. I like (as I think you realise) 'A series of unfortunate events' for the very reason that there is no break between the episodes of misfortune that the Baudelaire's undergo, while at the same time maturing and learning to turn the tables on the exceedingly caddish Count Omar, sorry Olaf (Omar, of course, was killed in VFD).

Consider a philosophical essay: you have an introduction, many arguments in the middle, and a conclusion to say what you believe in. A classic novel works on that scheme. Because a novel or a short story is something artificial, and not as natural as life. It is structured in a specific way. Otherwise, the novel would have no sense and no coherence (imagine if it were as busy as our lives!). It is made up as an object given to its reader. But notice that modern novels refuse this conception...and they are really interesting! (Celine's Voyage au bout de la nuit; Kerouac's On the Road)

life does have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Beginning=birth,End=death,Middle everything in between.

This structure may not be real life experience, but, apparently it has and continues to have an appeal to alot of people. I think it addresses our human need for order and control. We would really like to tie up all our loose ends.

Aristotle. The Ancient Greeks were the first civilization to have a truly broad repertoire of plays and stories and their increasing sophistication led the Philosopher Aristotle to write his “Poetics” in which he described the elements necessary for a story to be any good. One of the many points he made was that a story should have a beginning, a middle and an end. So now skip a couple of thousand years and combine the works of Joseph Campbell, Jung and other anthropologists and psychologists to consider why we tell stories. We do not tell stories to just reflect real life (what would be the point?). Stories act as a sub-conscious instruction on how to overcome difficulties. Difficulties have a structure that goes something like i) realise there is a problem, understand the problem and decide how important it is. ii) Start working on a solution, realise it is harder than it appeared at first, ask for help, get more people involved, become more committed, find a likely answer and work at it, then keep working at it. iii) Get close to the end, then realise there is some final issue that hadn’t been spotted, despair and almost give up; think about it a while and realise that the solution is simpler than it ever appeared. Put some more effort into it and finally achieve resolution. You can think of stories as an endless repetition of subliminal instructions from the human race to the human race on how to overcome problems. If you consider most Hollywood films they follow something like the structure above. The reason we obsess about stories and watch films over and over is because they really talk to our sub-conscious at this level. Stories are, furthermore, symbolic. Nothing in any story should be taken as literal. If it was literally the story of Harry Potter or Dorothy or Jane Eyre, why would I care? It’s not my story it is someone else’s! To be relevant to me, the characters and events in the story must relate to characters and events in mine own life. To relate to millions of readers or theatre-goers, each character must be a representative (symbolic), standing in for those “types” of people who exist in your life (parent-figures, wise old men, innocent children etc). And for events to be broadly applicable to millions of people, the events must also be representative of events that occur to everyone; for that, they must be symbolically abstract. It is not necessary for you to be in a collapsing building to enjoy a film about it. You relate to the experience of disaster and diversity. Of course it is possible to write stories that do not have this structure; these tend to be stories without a problem at their core. These are “observations” and they go nowhere in particular. By and large, they are not very entertaining except in small doses and unless they are very witty and provide new and interesting observations at every turn. Many people have attempted to write more realistic stories by making the mistake of thinking that stories should be more literal (more like real life). All such attempts are unpublished. Real life is a sequence of events that are very repetitive, with a few moments of variation thrown in every so often. We each of us notice the nuances of change that make our real lives enjoyable, but those nuances would be lost on other people. Stories and Real Life are two very, very different things. Two books make these points very eloquently, Robert McKee's "Story" is relatively brief, and Christopher Booker's "The Seven Basic Plots" uses about a billion pages to say the same thing. Of course Aristotle's "Poetics" has quite reputation.

I always thought the purpose of writing a story or novel was to make a point. What's the best way to do this? In order to make a point you don't just state your opinion and expect everyone to accept it as true; you have to give evidence. That's where a plot comes in. The writer develops a series of circumstances, elements and characters who build toward a moment in which your point is made, and then there is an outcome. The point the writer wants to make is illustrated and made believable by the plot and characters. Over time, this has proven to be an effective method of delivering an idea. Life does work like that: we have certain character traits and personal convictions, we face certain circumstances, make a decision, act (or not) and have consequences. My personal taste is that I don't like stories or writings that have no point, and I'm sure there must be other reasons to write besides the desire to make a point. But if one does want to make a point, I think a basic plot line is a good way to deliver it in fiction. A plot line DOES give us a way to relate to the moment of crisis/decision and see how and why things got to this moment, and what effect it had.