What are "Stories"?

    Two words pop up in most dictionary definitions of the word story: people and events. Most of those definitions also include a word or phrase such as “the telling of,” or “the relating of.” So what we have is:

    • people
    • events
    • telling
    One word is missing because it is implied. There is no purpose to the relating of events people are involved in without an audience. So to be very clear, we need to add another word:

    • audience
    We now have four words, two of which are the same thing: people. An audience is made of people so what we have are the same thing but from different angles or positions, so to speak. In fact, what we really have are three things that are the same, but from different angles because the word telling implies a teller.

    So of all the elements involved, people dominate: stories are about people, toldby people, told to people. And when we examine what events actually are we find they are things that happen to people. (Usually, though not necessarily. However, it’s not often we’re interested in events that don’t involve people except academically.)