Text types: Stories

Overview

Creative writing and verbal art

Stories entertain and capture people's interest in two main ways:

	The events in the story seem so unexpected, disruptive or remarkable that the audience wants to know how they will be resolved in the end.
	The storyteller introduces and describes the characters so the audience cares about what happens to them in the end.

To make us care about the events and the characters in a story, storytellers use language in ways which affect our senses, our emotions, our beliefs and our understanding. In the same way as visual artists make works of art by using materials such as pen and ink on paper or paint on canvas, or musicians make works of art with musical instruments and musical notes, storytellers use language to create verbal art, or literary language. For this reason, story writing is often called creative writing.  

Creative writers are artists who use texts in the following ways:

	to paint pictures of people, places and things
	to plot a series of unexpected or disruptive events, build suspense and reveal the outcome in an interesting and entertaining way
	to touch our senses and emotions
	to make us think and reflect about ourselves, our world and our values

When storytellers write creatively they often adapt, or break, the rules and conventions which apply to other kinds of writing. For example they may repeat the stages of a story. Some stories tell us about a problem which is partly or temporarily solved only for another problem, or problems, to arise. The storyteller may continue this pattern to build up suspense and tension. This pattern is common in longer stories, eg feature films, novels, soap operas.

Storytellers may also change the order of the stages of a story, for example, by not introducing the setting and the characters first but by beginning with the problem or the solution. As the story unfolds, the storyteller uses flashbacks to fill in the missing information. This is a technique often used in films. Writers may also combine and adapt elements of different types of stories. For example, a narrative might end with a moral similar to one used at the end of a moral tale.

In order to speed up the action and to make events seem more urgent or exciting, writers sometimes use sentence fragments instead of whole sentences. They may also switch from the past tense to the present tense in order to make an event seem more immediate and real. Storytellers often use spoken, everyday or colloquial language to enhance the description of a character or to reveal what a character is thinking or feeling. This is another way of making the characters and the events of the story seem more real.

Writers of children's stories often adapt the purpose and structure of different types of stories in order to make them more relevant or appealing to particular groups of children. Children's stories are usually recounts, moral tales, traditional stories or narratives written in language which is meaningful and relevant to a young audience. They are often published in picture books or on interactive CD ROMS. Children's stories are also told in films and cartoons. The illustrations and animation support and enhance the language of the story.

Tell me more ... What are stories? Creative writing and verbal art