What is a Story? - Part 3
In the first part of this quest to define story, we’ve talked about actors, events, and plot. In the second part we looked at empathy and conflict, both of which in combination create suspense and carry the audience through the story. This creates an experience that makes the story feel personal and relevant to the audience and allows them to internalize what is happening.
Both empathy and conflict serve another purpose that we haven’t discussed yet: They help to convey a message.

The Missing Pieces
Right now, our definition of story would be this:
“A story is a series of things that happen (events) because of a series of actions performed by actors, connected in a way that is guided by the creator’s imagination and at least one aspect of consistency (plot) to make the audience feel with the actors. Suspense is an essential feeling that the story must convey through conflicts that are eventually resolved to the audience’s satisfaction or selectively left unresolved.”
This feels a bit disjointed. The question is, why are we telling a story at all?
Intention
Let’s go back to our definitions from the beginning. The Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries1 and the Collins Dictionary2 add a reason to one of their definitions: “in order to entertain (people)”. Other reasons can be found on dictionary.com: “designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the hearer or reader”3. We could go on.
Why is this important?
Observation and context are always limited. We can never show or tell everything. What we do not show or tell is left to the audience’s imagination (we will explore this in another article). We can use this to our advantage, but it can also lead to misunderstanding. Even what we show and tell can be misunderstood if the audience receives a different message from the one we are trying to convey. To get a message across, it is important to use language that is easy to understand, precise and unambiguous (unless your focus is art and ambiguity is your goal), and to choose carefully what will be part of your story. In other words:
We tell stories for a reason.
Sometimes we just want to entertain. For example, when we tell stories to a friend to make them laugh. There are times when we want to teach like the professor of software engineering who tells the story of the Mars Climate Orbiter. At other times, we want to convince others. Our reasons for telling stories are as varied as the stories and the storytellers themselves. But all of them have something in common: they are what guides us when we have to choose what to say and how to say it4.
The reason can be as simple as demonstrating what a story is. Or as big as trying to change the world for the better. Or worse. It can be selfless or selfish. It may even be hidden from the creator. But it is always there.
In fact, there are often more than one.
Art and Literature
We talked about drama earlier, which led to our exploration of emotion and conflict. According to Merriam Webster5, drama is also related to art and literature.
Art… Have you ever thought about what art is? This is getting better with each paragraph.
At this point, we could despair of how complex all of this is and simply hand out stories to “learn by example”. We could also take a moment to appreciate the complexity of the issues that have shaped and defined human beings throughout their existence and continue to do so. Isn’t that amazing? The urge to explain the world has made all of it’s details visible and thus more fascinating.
What does Merriam Webster say about art6:
[Art is] the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects
Literature is defined as7:
writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest
The “conscious use” and “expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest” is what is related to intent. But there is more. The “aesthetic objects” and “excellence of form or expression” refer to skill and beauty.
Did you notice how I changed the first sentence of our Ruddy story while talking about emotions? The first version was:
Because a ball hit the ground, a dog barked next to it, while the moon shone above.
This is awfully boring. So I changed it to:
Ruddy barked as the ball hit the ground, the moon shining above.
This is better, but the second part is not great. It seems disconnected from the first part of the sentence. Can we leave it out?
No. It is our information as to when this scene takes place. Combined with the banging “bedroom” window, this tells us a lot without explicating that Ruddy’s barking just woke someone up in the middle of the night (show, don’t tell).
Instead of removing it, we can improve it:
The ball bounced off the pavement, just inches from Ruddy’s tail. His bark tore through the moonlit silence.
Looking back at our text, notice also how the window shutter “bangs” against the wall. The father does not call his son by name. Nor the dog. This is diction. Language carefully chosen to carry the audience away from their lives and into the story.
Diction should not be confused with verbosity or embellishment, both of which mean saying too much. In a story, you say only what is necessary.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is the main actor of a story. We’ve talked about actors before, but we will name the most important ones here because they relate to the intent.
It is a bad idea to preach intention as a moral (people will likely scoff at that). So how do you get a message across?
You make it the subject of the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist (the main opponent of the protagonist).
The story does not mention the message, but it becomes clear through the actions of the protagonist, the reactions of the antagonist, and the way the conflict is resolved.
Summary
So what do we have now? What is a story? Let’s put it all together:
“A story is a series of things that happen because of a series of actions performed by actors, connected in a way that is guided by the creator’s imagination and at least one aspect of consistency to give the audience a better understanding of the context and make them feel with the actors in a way that fulfills the creator’s intention. In order to fulfill the creator’s intention, the audience must experience the whole story. Thus, suspense is an essential feeling that the story must convey through conflicts between the protagonist and the antagonist that are eventually resolved to the audience’s satisfaction or selectively left unresolved if that is part of the intention.”
That is pretty long and convoluted. But before we look at a more usable definition, let’s talk about the parts of the dictionary definitions that we ignored.
Excluded from the Definition
Many of the definitions of story mention that the events on which it is based can be true or imagined. While this is true, it blurs the definition of story with that of fiction and non-fiction, and that is another topic to discuss.
Some definitions also mention an oral or written form. Stories do not need to be told or written. They can just happen in our minds. And you do not need words to tell a story. A picture can tell a story. A melody can tell a story. Literary Terms has more to add to this8:
A story or narrative is a connected series of events told through words (written or spoken), imagery (still and moving), body language, performance, music, or any other form of communication.
Unfortunately, this definition also reduces a story to a series of events.
I have not talked about narrative before and I will not talk about it here. A narrative is not the same as a story, but what a narrative is… is another story.
A New Definition
We’ve taken a journey through the complexity of story and arrived at a definition. Let’s boil it down to its essence:
A story is an art form that revolves around a protagonist and an antagonist, providing (emotional) context to a series of logically connected, conflict-driven events in order to convey meaning to an audience.
This is what defines a story to me. Other forms of communication (description, account, …) can answer the W-questions (who, what, when, where, why). A story does the same, wrapping it all in a “how” that makes us experience and internalize something new.
-
“Story.” Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English / [by] A.S. Hornby ; Editor Jonathan Crowther. Oxford, England :Oxford University Press, 1995. Accessed September 12, 2023, from https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/story ↩︎
-
“Story.” Collins English Dictionary. Accessed September 7, 2023, from https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/story ↩︎
-
“Story.” dictionary.com Dictionary. Accessed September 7, 2023, from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/story ↩︎
-
To be precise, intentions are not the only guides through the jungle of possibilities. Logic helps and restricts us as well. And the jungle itself varies in size based on our knowledge. But these are topics for another day. ↩︎
-
“Drama.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster. Accessed September 12, 2023, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/drama ↩︎
-
“Art.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster. Accessed September 12, 2023, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/art ↩︎
-
“Literature.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster. Accessed September 12, 2023, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literature ↩︎
-
“Story.” Literary Terms. (2015, June 1). Accessed September 12, 2023, from https://literaryterms.net/story/ ↩︎