I don't really think of 'the story' in a concrete sense. and sadly, definitely not in an awesome blue balloon sense. (I love that) To me the story is just a piece of life put down on the page. like if I told you what I made for lunch yesterday, that's not my whole day. and obviously that is a crappy comparison, but hopefully kind of makes the point. i have no affinity at all for some of the traditional 'craft' of story telling. Arc and conflict and that sort of thing. Mostly, I am just deeply fascinated by character and want to watch them, or write about them. So I guess I consider everything that has ever happened to a character, everything they have seen, heard, can remember, all of it, to be part of the story, but not to be part of the words on the page under a particular title.