Linear Stories vs Blocks

Long form content is nothing but connecting ideas. That's why writing is linear and serial. And one side-effect of communicating serially is that you have to force ideas into some sort of order. 

With stories the authors flatten clouds of connected ideas into linear stories (lossy). Readers unbundle these linear stories, and stitch them into their own nonlinear cloud of connected ideas (lossy). In a constant game of bundling and unbundling information.