What is a story?

We explain what a story is and what was the origin of these stories. The transmission of values, and the characteristics of the story.

1. What is a story?

The story is a type of literary narration that can have a single author or several , the story that is composed through the narration of successive events can be based on real events or they can also be fictional (invented by the author). The term comes from the Latin language ” compŭtus”  which is translated as “account”.

The plot of the story, in turn, can have a single main character or a small group of characters . Different types of stories are developed, which specialize in touching specific topics or that are intended for a certain audience.

2. Origin of the story

In their origins, the stories were part of the popular traditions and fables of the society to which they belonged, these were transmitted mainly orally therefore they suffered modifications over time . These fables and stories related facts that touched on subjects shared by the inhabitants, in this way the cultural values ​​held by a community become important .

Always associated with cultural traditions, stories served to transmit cultural values from generation to generation , especially to introduce the youngest and children in society .

3. Characteristics of the story

Many times the stories had fictitious elements but the purpose of narrating it was to convey a message , purpose or moral that establishes a series of values . In other cases, stories are only based on important real events, and as a third possibility, there are stories that combine real elements with other fictional ones.

The main  objective of the story is to achieve an impressive impression on the reader . It is characteristic of the stories to be a short text , of less extension than a novel , and the number of characters participating in the central actions are few. It follows the course of a voice narrating the facts, it is the one who presents the actors, establishes points of view, details the conflicts and the outcome.

It is commonly confused what is a story with a short novel , because the limits in both cases are quite diffuse. In the novels are presented details of the scenarios, events and characters much deeper and more detailed.

Some of the most recognized storytellers worldwide are: Alain Robbe-Grillet, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Anton Chekhov, Arthur C. Clarke, Augusto Monterroso, Charles Bukowski, Dylan Thomas, Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway, Esteban Echeverría, Franz Kafka, Gabriel García Márquez, Guy de Maupassant, Hanif Kureishi, Heinrich Boll, Horacio Quiroga, Italo Calvino, Jack London, Jerome David Salinger, John Berger, John Cheever, Jorge Luis Borges, Juan José Arreola, Juan Rulfo, Julio Cortazar, Katherine Mansfield, Khalil Gibran, Leon Tolstoy, Lazaro Covadlo, Marguerite Duras, Marguerite Yourcenar, Mario Benedetti, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Nikolai Gogol, O. Henry, Oscar Wilde, Oswald de Andrade, Rabindranath Tagore, Raymond Carver, Robert Louis Stevenson, Roberto Arlt, Roberto Arlt, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Samuel Beckett, Tommaso Landolfi, Truman Capote, Varlam Shalamov,Yasunari Kawabata, Álvaro Cepeda Samudio.