Story Genres: Different types of stories

Stories can be classified into different genres or categories. A genre is a style or category of art, music or literature.

Folktale

Folk tale is a short story that has been passed down from generation to generation through word of mouth. These stories usually do not have a single author. “Hansel and Gretel”, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” are popular examples of folk tales.

Fairytale

Fairy tale is an imaginary story about magical people, places and things. Examples of fairy tales include “Cinderella”, “Rumpelstiltskin.”

Autobiography

An autobiography is a story of a real person’s life and written by the same person. It is a non-fictional story. A biography, on the other hand, is the story of a person written by someone else. My Experiments with Truth is the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi.

Mystery

Mystery is a suspense filled story about a puzzling event that is not solved until the end of the story. Mystery is a fictional story about a crime that is solved only in the end. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are extremely popular mystery stories.

Science Fiction

A story that uses descriptions of science and technology – often set in the future, it may include robots, aliens and time machines.

Adventure

Adventure is a fictional story in which exciting, even dangerous things happen to the characters as they embark on some epic journey in unfamiliar environments. Gulliver’s Travels. by Jonathan Swift, Treasure Island. by Robert Louis Stevenson are popular examples of adventure stories.

Fable

Fable is a short moral story, usually with animals as characters. These stories feature animals that behave and speak like humans, and they always end with a ‘moral’. For example, the Panchatantra stories.

Questions

Q. Identify the type of story according to the given definitions.

• a. A story about unusual and adventurous events, usually involving magic and supernatural elements.
• b. A story where problems are solved by following clues.