An account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment. Stories help us connect with others, communicate ideas, and imagine life's possibilities. Even the most basic stories have a beginning, middle, and end. Short story: a fictitious literary composition in prose or poetry, shorter than a novel; narrative; tale. Novella: a relatively long fictional prose narrative with a more or less complex plot or pattern of events, about actions, feelings, motives, of a group of characters.