Story Genres and Definitions

[Layne Gneiting]

Colleagues:

I've been working on a comprehensive document that funnels tales into broader categories, and would value feedback from this community of experts. Do your tales fit within these categories, or do some spill into other genres/types? What categories would you add? Do the definitions align with your own? What changes might you make?

EPIC: Long film, book, or other work portraying heroic deeds and adventures or covering an extended period of time.

FABLE: Short story, typically with animals as characters, conveying a moral.

FAIRY TALE: Children’s story about magical and imaginary beings and lands.

FOLK TALE: Story originating in popular culture, typically passed on by word of mouth.

MYTH: a traditional story, esp. concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events

LEGEND: a traditional story sometimes popularly regarded as historical but unauthenticated

PARABLE: a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson, as told by Jesus in the Gospels

PERSONAL TALE: tale, exaggerated or otherwise, based on a personal experience

SAGA: a long story of heroic achievement, esp. a medieval prose narrative in Old Norse or Old Icelandic

TALL TALE: an improbable (unusual or incredible or fanciful) story

[Christi U.]

BTW, what's your difference between saga & epic? They sound strikingly similar, here.

[Buck P Creacy]

Hey there Layne

I love it. Good list. Wonder where "Mother and I" tales fall into a category. hmmm I am going to have to think about that.

Buck

[Valerie Jean Menard]

You might consider Historical stories - stories written around non-fictional historic people or events.