Discover ALL the characteristics of the story

Each literary genre It has its own characteristics that define it and make it unique. This is what happens with the story, a type of composition that has some elements of its own such as, for For example, brevity, they are usually in prose, have a more specific and reduced plot than the novel, etc. So that you know the genre of the story better, in this lesson from a PROFESSOR we are going to discover you all the characteristics of the story and, in addition, we will also discover the particular characteristics of the popular tale and the literary tale.

Index

1. Main characteristics of the story
2. The most outstanding characteristics of the popular tale
3. The most outstanding characteristics of the literary tale

The tale is a narrative text that tells us a story whose action is carried out by a few characters.

Here we discover the main characteristics of the story so that you can better understand this literary genre and learn to detect it when you are before it.

Fictional stories

The stories are fictional texts. Namely, the author takes you into an imaginary universe that, although it may have traces of reality and history, they dress under the cloak of fiction to register on the literary plane. These stories can start from historical or real events, but the development of the story is nourished by fiction and with elements of literature, such as the use of rhetorical figures, of a refined style, and so on. This is what makes the text be literary and we are not before a historical text, for example.

Single argument

Another of the characteristics of the story and that separates this genre from another such as the novel is that the stories, due to their brevity, have a single plot line. That is, the action that moves the story is only one and the author focuses on exploiting that plot before getting lost in the subtopics that abound in the novels.

Brevity

Of course, one of the most particular elements of the stories is that it is a shorter text than other literary texts. This makes parts of a story They are very well defined from the beginning and that, although the author plays with them and changes their order, the result is understandable to the reader. The structure is, therefore, simpler because in a few pages the story must begin, develop and be solved.

Limited characters

Due to the shortness of the story and the fact that we only have one plot line, in this type of literary text we find many fewer characters than in a novel. Although there may be several characters, the truth is that the author focuses on one or two so as not to overwhelm the reader and make understanding the story easy.

Effect unit

The story is a work of art that can be enjoyed in one sitting. Unlike the novel, to which you have to dedicate many hours of your time, the story is designed so that you can read it from beginning to end at the same moment. This allows the author to create a much more impressive effect with this type of text and thus be able to play and surprise the reader with an unexpected ending or an amazing twist. This characteristic is shared with poetry.

The importance of narrative tension

One of the most important characteristics of the story is that it has to have a tension that encourages the reader to keep turning the pages. Being shorter texts, it is important to capture attention and that the rhythm of the plot does not drop at any time. Therefore, in stories, descriptions do not usually abound, but the action occupies a leading position so that the reader is hooked on the plot.

Centripetal structure

All the elements that appear in a story are related to each other. This means that if the author mentions a bird at the beginning of the story, this bird will have an important meaning for the development of the plot or that even later, it will appear again. Everything that appears in the story has outstanding importance and is related to the message that the author wants to launch.

Written in prose

Another feature of the story is that these texts are written in prose. They follow the basic structure of textual organization such as the use of paragraphs, full stops, and so on. Although the language can be a poetic prose, that is, with a very lyrical and aesthetic style, the writing rules that stories follow are those of prose and never of poetry.

Image: Maestro San Blas

Now that we have seen in a general way what the main characteristics of the story are, we are going to talk specifically about the popular tale. It is a kind of traditional storytelling that has come to us due to the oral transmission. It is possible that there are many versions of the same story since, depending on the time, some elements can be added or eliminated.

Originally, the tales were popular tales and that they did not have their own authorship. They were explained to pass the time and, little by little, a fantasy story was created that left a great mark on our culture. Some of the best known stories of oral tradition are Ali Baba and the 40 thieves or Sinbad, stories that were collected in the compilation "The Thousand and One Nights".

In Spain there were some authors who exercised the arduous task of compiling popular tales. Don Juan Manuel carried out this task by gathering Count Lucanor, for example. Here we leave you some of the characteristics of the popular tale so that you can better know this narrative subgenre.

Anonymous author

It is one of the great differences between the folk tale and the literary one and is that, in the former, the author was anonymous or unknown. The texts, being of oral tradition, lost their authorship and became everyone's stories.

Oral transmission

Unlike the literary tale, the popular story does not originate in a written text but comes from oral tradition. Stories that have been told from generation to generation and that, finally, have become characteristic elements of a certain culture.

Different versions

Another feature of the folk tale is that you can find many versions of the same story. This happens because it is not a text that is fixed in an original way and, therefore, each author can give it his or her own touch or interpretation of it. In addition, the versions can change depending on the narrator who tells them and this means that there can be many differences in the same story.

Linear structure

Being a simpler type of story and popular tradition, the structure that these constructions usually present is usually linear. In literary stories the author can play more with the language and surprise the reader with different structures that have a greater aesthetic intention. This is not the case with most oral stories that have a simpler structure.

Moralizing purpose

And finally, the vast majority of the popular tales that literary draws on have a didactic or moralistic intention. These stories want to communicate something to the listeners and, therefore, the end of the stories usually highlights that message so that its intentionality is not lost.

Image: Language and literature

This type of story is usually written by an author and only has one version (unlike the popular tale). In a literary tale the story is always written carefully and using neat literary language. It is a literary creation that is made by a writer that he thinks about his work, creates it mentally and, later, transforms it verbatim, giving it a rhythm and a personal style. Some well-known storytellers are authors like Edgar Allan Poe or Julio Cortazar.

We can speak that the oral or popular tale is the predecessor of the literary tale, stories that were transmitted between generations and that ended up establishing a narrative genre shorter than the novel but with a message and a very clear. Some of the characteristics of the literary tale are the following:

• Multiple themes: The story can talk about many topics and the choice of it will depend on the author's preference. That is, they can be horror and mystery stories (like Poe's), tales with a fantastic and metaphysical tendency (like Cortázar's), children's-themed stories, and so on.
• Stable and fixed history: It is the great difference from folk tales. And it is that the literary is a type of story that is written and fixed in the letters, therefore, it does not admit innovations or variations. It is a complete story with a specific beginning and end.
• Known Author: It is another of the characteristics of the literary tale and that differentiates it from the popular one. In these cases, the author is usually a well-known writer or, at least, an author who signs the text that he has created with his names and surnames. In the case of oral stories, they are often created anonymously or unknown because even the moment of their appearance is unknown.
• Subjectivity: It is also typical of literary stories that the author takes advantage of the text to launch his own ideas or show us his particular vision of the world.

Image: Slideshare

If you want to read more articles similar to Characteristics of the story: popular and literary, we recommend that you enter our category of Literary concepts.