Plenty of ups and downs are key to a great story, research finds

Since at least Aristotle, writers and scholars have debated what makes for a great story. One of them is Samsun Knight, a novelist who is also an economist and assistant professor of marketing at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. With a scientist's tools, he's done what previous theorizers have failed to: put theory to the test and demonstrated the key factor for empirically predicting which stories will be snore fests and which will leave audiences hungry for more.