A truly great story doesn’t let us go. It enraptures us, keeps us up all night, compels us to keep turning pages, and enlists us as one of its own characters, as if we belonged to its world. In other words, great stories give us a home.

But it wouldn’t be a great story if home remained unchanged. We would never come to know any of these worlds without innocence lost—an inciting incident that upends the harmony of these sacred places, threatens their very existence, and calls for ordinary characters to become heroes or else perish at the hands of evil.