I think one of the things that people underestimate about storytelling in written fiction form is that it is for people who don't share as many references with you as your friends and relations do. Perhaps Aunt So-and-so is the great family storyteller. Everyone is in stitches when So-and-so comes over for dinner. But part of that is that So-and-so is drawing on your memory of Cousin Such-and-such -- "you know what he's like" -- and on familiar rhythms of speech and story structure, and so on. So-and-so is not telling the whole story -- she's relying upon you to already know half of it. The sentence that encapsulates this problem is, "I guess you had to be there." Fiction writers are not generally able to rely on someone having been there for nearly as much as conversational storytellers are.