Nor is it merely that we are more likely to remember a plotted narrative; we are also less likely to ask awkward questions about it. This is why historians as well novelists (traditionally) place such value on “followability”; it limits the possibility of awkward questions, it leaves less to explain; for historians usually write narratives rather than explanation if they can. Thus the detection of occult figurations, and the questioning of the narrative as a report of fact, is delayed.
– The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (1980), p. 113