ACEP - 4 More on Stories

Today I had an interesting discussion about what is a story. So just what is a story. most dictionaries have a similar definition which is along the lines of:

A narrative or story in its broadest sense is anything told or recounted; more narrowly, something told
or recounted in the form of a causally-linked set of events; account; tale,: the telling of a happening or connected series of happenings, whether true or fictitious. http://www.stevedenning.com/What_story.html

other definitions can be found at answers.com, or google's definitions.

From thse we see that the story is just a collection of events. My Oxford dictionary has 3 meanings; two of the relate to the telling if events or factual information.
However, many people have this veiw that a story is the telling of a fictional account, like a novel or fib (as in a child telling stories)
This had led to a down-grading of the word story.
Most cultures use story telling to convey their history, their law, the social mores, etc, to the next generation. Generally these are not stories of fiction.
Interpretive guides and teachers also make extensive use of stories. They use them to tell the history of locations, about events about how to do things using examples.
So, in our society there are those who suggest that the term "story" should not be used but rather terms such as histories, lore, mores.
Personally, I think that these terms miss the point.

The term story also conveys a sense of how it is told.
A history can be a string of items , like dates; whereas a historical story is something people are more likely to want to hear, than a string of dates.

So, in using the term story I want it to convey the full sense of the word: the way it is told, the factual content, a way in which information can be conveyed such that the listener may have a comprehension of what is being told and hopefully remember it sometime in the future. It is a means to get an audience to get a sense of feeling about what is being told.

As I said before remove the story: remove the life.
Life would be pretty ordinary without the stories.