Short Story Notes

Fable: the root of all story

GOALS:

1. Specifically, be able to describe the features of a classical fable;

2. Technically, be able to explain how any story like the fable has a point;

3. Critically, be able to evaluate how well any story like the fable teaches as well as entertains so as to move its audience to feel and think and act a certain way.

A story is the verbal development of an action driven by at least one character toward at least one end, usually with some obstacle making it difficult to achieve that end.

A story has at least five elements. It involves story-telling. It thus involves narrating a sequence of actions, at least a rudimentary plot. Dialogue and action indicate at least one character, who is active in the plot or at least subject to what happens The necessary scene where the character acts out the plot [or perhaps where a narrator tells the story] must be described or implied. This narration must finally have some thematic coherence, a unifying theme or even an explicit moral lesson.

The simplest coherent fiction is the fable

Fables are short, analytical teaching fictions.

What makes a story? It is a series of events involving characters motivated for a particular purpose in a particular setting, told to a particular audience for its own particular purpose. This ’telling of the story’ is the narrative, which someone (the narrator)  tells the chosen audience in a particular manner for that purpose.  A narrative is more than just a sequence of events because the actions of the characters in their setting add up to, or enable us to infer thematically, the point (or theme,  or significance)  of the story.

a fable teaches, entertains, and moves the reader.

structure, characters, setting, and most importantly a moral lesson

LESSONS

Humans tell stories as a matter of our existence. A story is a basic way to understand our experience of the world. Stories tell us what happened, where, to and by whom, how and...