The Art of storytelling

I wonder whether I am qualified enough to write this. I mean, hell, here I am, an amateur writer, and already I am talking anout the art of story-telling! Oh come on!
But, seriously. I mean, it is high time someone talked of story-telling. Not writing, not photography, not anything else. Just, plain and simple, the art of story telling.
For some reason it is a thankless thing in the world to be a good story-teller. There are awards constituted, big names like the Booker Prize, or the Oscars, but no one really cares about how well a story is told. All the world cares about is just the way you leave hidden meanings, for example, or how you extoll a burning issue, or, well, how well you manage to confuse the audience(!)
But people don't pick up novels or watch movies to think and ponder. Many a times whole novels are made and whole movies are shot keeping in mind that fictitious personality who is sitting in a library, wearing half-moon glasses and writing pages about how the hero represents a man in conflict with so and so and how this and how that while he watches a movie or reads a novel. Most often, however, the real life character comes from work, falls on the sofa, loosens his tie and switches on his TV. Or lies down in his bed, switches on the nightlamp, and picks up a novel. You read a novel not to know and understand, but,most often, to be entertained.
So, what makes a good story? There are, basically, three aspects to a story, or so I believe. One is what the story is about, in its most coarse-grained form. Is it a love story? An adventure? A fantasy? This is the thing that first ignites in the mind of the writer or the movie maker. When Douglas Adams thought of the Hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy he didn't think up the entire compendium in one go. It probably started with a seed, an impression perhaps, of how the novel would feel. This seed must be of the best quality. You must know, and trust that what you have in mind is truly beautiful, or awe inspiring. You cannot start with a routine, bottomless thought and expect it to become beautiful.
Next comes how the story is constructed. Who are the characters? What kind of people are they? Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca scores heavily on this account. That story couldn't, just couldn't have been written with any characters other than what Maurier chose. Recently I watched Johny Gaddar. The film seemed totally flat, and this was the reason why. They had a good story, but never gave any thought to the way the story should flow. The amount of time they had to delve on a particular event. The kind of people they were talking about.
Last, but not the least comes the manner in which it is told. Is the writing too fast? Too slow? Too complex? Is the background too dark? Is the music inappropriate? The idea behind any story must be to involve the reader, to completely immerse her in your story. If in the middle of the narrative she wakes up and realises that the song wasn't good enough, there. Your story is gone. It isn't worth the effort. Yann Martel in his Life of Pi writes in such a simple but vivid manner that you don't even realise that the story is too fantastic to be true. That's how it should be. Fiction that looks like the truth.
That's all I'd like to preach my friends! Sermon over! But before I close: I think the motive behind a good story is to give the audience an alternate reality, a separate life. If at the end of the story a guy has not forgotten his wife's birthday , then all the above notwithstanding, the story is, really, a bad story.