Examples of Stories

A short story is a short tale with few characters and a single plot that may be based on real or fictional events. For example: The Continuity of Parks (Julio Cortázar), The Tell-Tale Heart (Edgar Allan Poe), and The Adventures of Pinocchio (Carlo Collodi).

These stories have a relatively simple plot, in which the characters participate in a single central conflict. The spaces are also limited: the events generally take place in one or two locations.

• See also: Differences between short story and novel

Parts of the story

Like any narrative text , the story is structured in three parts:

• Introduction. This is the beginning of the story, introducing the characters and their goals, as well as the “normality” of the story, which will be altered at the climax.
• Knot. The conflict that disrupts the initial normality is presented, and the most important events occur. This is the problem the characters must confront.
• Outcome. The climax and resolution of the conflict that arose in the plot occur.
• More in: Introduction, middle and end

Types of stories

According to their formal characteristics and themes, stories can be classified into various subgenres, including:

• Fairy tales. The characters involved in the plot have fantastical qualities, such as fairies, witches, goblins, gnomes, elves, etc. Magic and supernatural events predominate, and they are usually set in a fantasy world that the reader accepts without question. They are generally intended for children. For example: Little Red Riding Hood, Pinocchio, The Little Mermaid.
• Fantastic tales. These stories narrate common, everyday actions that are suddenly interrupted by an inexplicable element that breaks the laws of nature. In them, the fantastic is perceived as natural by the characters. They usually have an ending that leaves the reader in an ambiguous situation. For example: ” Casa tomada” (The House Taken Over), “El Aleph” (The Aleph).
• Realistic stories. They use elements from real life, so their stories seem believable and possible in the readers’ world (which doesn’t mean they’re true). They don’t include magical or fantastical events, nor do they include characters who might be out of touch with reality (such as witches, fairies, or ghosts). Their temporal and spatial settings are also usually plausible. For example: Rabbit, The Slaughterhouse.
• Horror stories. Their intention is to generate fear or unease in readers, and this is achieved by creating a certain atmosphere or telling a story that provokes horror. Some of the themes found in these types of stories are horrific crimes, ghosts, or haunted houses. Many realistic or fantasy stories can also be horror stories. For example: The Black Cat, The Signalman.
• Science fiction stories. These stories are set in the near or distant future, where science and technology are different from what the reader is familiar with (more developed) and allow for the exploration of utopian or dystopian situations. Themes often include robots, space exploration, time travel, extraterrestrial life, apocalypticism, among others. For example: The Rocket, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.
• Detective stories. These stories revolve around a crime and the investigation that follows to find the perpetrator. The narrative focuses on describing the procedures by which the detective manages to find the culprit and understand the motive behind the crime. There are usually several suspects, but the criminal is usually an unexpected character for the reader. There are two types of detective stories:
  • Classic detective stories .A detective is tasked with unraveling a mystery that, at first, seems impossible to solve. To do so, they rely on rational thinking and the observation of details, which serve as evidence. For example: The Purloined Letter.
  • Noir detective novels. The characters are more complex than in classic detective novels, and the distinction between heroes and villains is not as clear, as they often take place in a decaying society, where people’s worst misery is exposed. For example: Shadow in the Night.

On the other hand, according to their authorship and transmission, two types of stories can be distinguished:

• Folk tales. These are anonymous narratives passed down orally from generation to generation (although in some cases they are written down), and they can have more than one version. For example: The Three Little Pigs .
• Author’s tales. These are narratives attributed to a single author, generally transmitted in written form, and have only one version. For example: The House of Asterion, by Jorge Luis Borges.
• Continued on: Types of stories

Elements of the story

In most stories, the following elements can be distinguished:

• Narrator. This is the person who tells the story, and may or may not be part of it, depending on whether they are a witness , protagonist , or omniscient . Thus, they can relate the events from a more objective or subjective perspective.
• Characters. These are the characters who drive the plot forward. There’s usually a protagonist, and there may also be secondary characters who accompany them on their journey, although in short stories, the number is usually limited. In addition, many stories feature an antagonist, that is, a character whose interests oppose those of the protagonist.
• Specific time and place. The time of the story can be present, past, or future, and the story can span minutes, months, years, or centuries. In turn, the places in stories are usually limited, and depending on their importance, they may be more or less described in the narrative.
• Plot. It is the sum of situations and events that characters face, organized in such a way that they occur with a certain logic, whether linear in time or not.

Examples of classic tales

1. Snow White

Legend has it that, at the end of a winter when snow had covered almost everything, a kind but lonely queen discovered a red rose in her garden. Wondering how the flower could have endured such cold, she reached for it, but a thorn pierced her skin, causing three drops of blood to spill onto the snow.

Moved by the beauty of the colors, the queen wished with all her might for a daughter as red as blood, as white as snow, and as black as the window frames overlooking the garden. Some kind fairy heard her plea and decided to grant her wish, so the queen found herself pregnant when spring arrived. Thus, Snow White was born: a girl with hair as black as ebony, skin as white as snow, and lips as red as the blood shed by her mother.

But the birth was complicated, and the kind queen died in childbirth, so Snow White was an orphan from the start. Her father, the king, took a new wife, who turned out to be a beautiful but distant, haughty, and extremely vain woman. So much so that every day, after grooming herself, she would approach a magic mirror she owned and ask it: “Mirror, magic mirror, tell me one thing: Who in this kingdom is the most beautiful woman?” To which the mirror, fulfilling her orders, would reply: “You, Your Majesty, and no one else, are the most beautiful woman in this kingdom.”

• See full text at: Snow White Story

2. Goldilocks

Once upon a time, in a faraway, peaceful forest, there lived a family of bears of different sizes: Papa Bear was the biggest, Mama Bear was medium-sized, and Baby Bear was the smallest of the three. Each one had a bed in their house appropriate for their size, as well as a plate appropriate for their size and a chair to sit at the table, appropriate for each one’s size.

One morning, after getting up, Mama Bear made a delicious breakfast, which she served on three plates, and called her family to the table. But as soon as they were seated, they realized the food was too hot—they’d burn their snouts if they tried to eat it!

“We’d better let it cool down,” Papa Bear announced.

“How about we go for a walk in the meantime?” Mama bear said.

“A walk, yes!” the little bear immediately exclaimed.

And without another word, the bears left their breakfast on the table and went for a walk in the woods. As the family strolled, a little girl stumbled upon their house: a girl with hair so yellow she was known as “Goldilocks.”

• See full text at: The Tale of Goldilocks

3. Pinocchio

Long ago, in a village in Italy, there lived an old carpenter named Gepetto, who dedicated himself to making toys for all the children in the village, since he had no family or grandchildren of his own.

Gepetto was generous and shared his joy with the children, but sometimes he felt lonely and unhappy, so one day he gathered some leftover wood and decided to create a friendly puppet to entertain himself. The work turned out so well and seemed so lifelike that the old carpenter named the puppet Pinocchio, sighing deeply, wishing he could become a real boy.

One night, his wish came true. A fairy, who often visited him in secret to enjoy the laughter he gave to the village children, thought the old man deserved some joy, and, raising her magic wand, she breathed life into the wooden puppet. Thus, Pinocchio came to life and went to meet Geppetto.

• See full text at: The Tale of Pinocchio

4. Hansel and Gretel

Long ago, on the outskirts of a forest in Germany, there lived a woodcutter with his second wife and the two children he had with his first wife, named Hansel, the boy, and Gretel, the girl. Those were times of great poverty and famine, and the woodcutter’s family didn’t have much food left.

“What are we going to do?” his wife complained to the woodcutter. “We’ll run out of food very quickly with those two greedy children.”

But he only asked for patience and told her that things would soon improve. Things continued this way until one night, believing the children to be fast asleep, the woodcutter’s wife suggested they take them deep into the forest, build a fire, and leave them there for some pious traveler to care for.

“How can you propose such a thing to me?” the woodcutter replied. “What will become of my poor children in the forest?”

“If we don’t, we’ll all starve to death!” she insisted. “When things get better, we’ll have new children, and it’ll be as if nothing ever happened.”

Hansel and Gretel listened to the conversation and trembled with fear. They knew that sooner or later their stepmother would convince their father. So, a few days later, when their stepmother woke them up saying they would all go camping in the forest together, they knew what was coming.

• See full text at: Hansel and Gretel Story

5. The Ugly Duckling

Like every year, Mrs. Duck spent her summers on the farm hatching eggs. Throughout the season, her co-workers, besides treating her to keep her stress-free, anxiously waited for the ducklings to emerge from those shiny shells. Why so much anticipation? Mrs. Duck always had the most beautiful ducklings in the area. They assumed this summer would be no exception.

Finally, the long-awaited day arrived: the eggs began to crack one by one, and small yellow heads peeked out. The excited ducks began arriving at Mrs. Duck’s yard. None of them wanted to miss that moment.

In total, Lady Duck had hatched seven eggs. One of them took longer than the rest to hatch, although no one noticed. All the ducks were mesmerized by these tiny birds, who patiently shed their shells.

After a while, and when calm returned, the seventh egg, the largest of all, began to crack. This time, the ducks’ faces, alert to the belated phenomenon, reflected not smiles but rather surprise. Some even forgot to blink for a long time.

The duckling, which was happily and clumsily emerging from its shell, was not only bigger than its siblings but also stood out for being much longer, thinner, and uglier.

• See full text at: Short stories with a beginning, middle, and end

More examples of stories according to their genre

Wonderful tales

6. Little Red Riding Hood. The French author Charles Perrault was the first to put this orally transmitted tale into writing. It tells the story of a girl who, at her mother’s request, takes a basket of food to her grandmother, who lives in the forest and is sick. Along the way, the girl is tricked by a ferocious wolf. Thanks to a passing lumberjack, the story concludes with a happy ending.
7. The Little Mermaid. Written by Danish poet Hans Christian Andersen, this tale was published in 1937. It tells the story of a young princess named Ariel who lives at the bottom of the sea. As a birthday present, she prepares to make her dream come true: to visit the human world. There, she meets a handsome prince, with whom she falls in love, but her mermaid nature prevents her from being with him.

Fantastic tales

8. The Aleph. Written by Jorge Luis Borges and first published in the magazine Sur in 1945, this short story would later become part of a book of the same name. The story’s protagonist—who bears the same name as its author, to further blur the lines between reality and fiction—faces the painful loss of Beatriz Viterbo. Every anniversary of her death, as promised, he visits the house where she had lived until her death. There he establishes a bond with Beatriz’s cousin, Daneri. Some time later, Borges receives a call from him in which he tells him that the old house will be demolished and reveals its secret: in the basement lies an Aleph, a point from which one can see the entire universe simultaneously.
9. House Taken Over. Written by Julio Cortázar and first published in 1946, this story tells the tale of two very unusual brothers who live together in an old colonial house. They begin to hear a series of strange noises, such as whispers or chairs being moved. From this moment on, the brothers withdraw, and as the story progresses, they abandon and lock up the parts of the house that are being “taken over” by the intruders. Eventually, the house is completely taken over, and the protagonists end up on the street.

Detective stories

10. The Purloined Letter .Written by Edgar Allan Poe, this classic detective story takes place in 1800s Paris, where a minister steals a compromising letter from an influential person to have her at his mercy. So, the police search his house inch by inch without luck and go in search of Dupin, the astute detective. After visiting the thief, he discovers where the letter is: the thief hasn’t hidden it anywhere the police searched, but has left it in plain sight, since no one would suspect a simple letter lying on a desk.
11. Shadow in the Night. The author of this noir thriller set in the United States in the 1920s is Dashiell Hammett. Through a series of characters, the story conveys what those years were like, marked by Prohibition, gangsters, and racial segregation.

Realistic stories

12. Rabbit. Its author is Abelardo Castillo, and the story was published in 1961. This short story takes the form of a monologue and features a boy who tells his toy, a rabbit, about the loneliness he suffers in an adult world where he is treated like an object.
13. The Slaughterhouse. It was published twenty years after the death of its author, Esteban Echeverría, in 1871. In Buenos Aires, ruled by Rosas, “The Restorer,” the work conveys the violent opposition that existed between Unitarians and Federalists and how the latter were carried away by barbarism with a young Unitarian.

Horror stories

14. The Black Cat. It was written by the American Edgar Allan Poe and was first published in the Saturday Evening Post in August 1843. It tells the story of a married couple who live a normal life with their cat. One day, the man falls into alcoholism and, in a fit of rage, kills the pet. Everything is precipitated when a new cat appears on the scene and this leads to a terrible outcome, in which the woman ends up dead and walled up behind a layer of bricks, along with the animal.
15. The Signalman. It was written by Charles Dickens and published in the literary magazine All the Year Round in 1866. It tells the story of a ghost who sporadically appears on the railway tracks and always brings terrible news. Each time he appears, the signalman knows that death is imminent.

Science fiction stories

16. The Rocket .A short story by Ray Bradbury published in 1950, it tells the story of the Bodoni family, which takes place in a future where people can travel to different planets as tourists, although this is too expensive for them. With great effort, the father manages to raise the money for a family member to travel, but when he suggests it, no one wants to go alone. So, he decides to spend his savings on a model of a rocket, and secretly builds a full-scale replica, with a theater in the cockpit and screens. Thus, he takes his children on a convincing trip to Mars, which they say they will remember forever, although it is a simulation, since the rocket is a model that has never left the ground.
17. I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream .Written by Harlan Ellison and published in March 1967, this story is set in a post-apocalyptic future. It tells the story of a military computer that becomes self-aware and decides to wipe out the human race through a nuclear holocaust. However, it rescues five people to take revenge on humanity, having developed an infinite hatred for it. To this end, the computer makes its prisoners immortal, only to subject them to the most terrible methods of torture.