You’re basically writing a bug‑free application, but instead of debugging you’re debugging emotions. Narrative beats are like function calls—each one has a purpose, a side effect, and a nasty place where you can break the whole thing. Code modules are your subplots, cleanly wrapped so that if a character screws up, the rest of the story can keep running. The real art is making sure the function calls aren’t just doing what they’re told, but that they still feel like a story, not a stack trace. And if you ever think the plot is too simple, just add a hidden import that crashes halfway through.