Surprisingly, few people who are interested in literature and who understand its genres know what the true story is. The word itself causes quite existential associations, but it is by no means regarded as a literary term. Oddly enough, the true story is really a genre of literature related to prose and denotes any story about the events that supposedly took place in reality.
Is it fiction or fiction?
The main difference from the story was that the first is most often retold orally, and the second is distributed on paper. It is possible to clarify what reality is, using the opposite term - non-fiction. When a person tells “fiction” or “fiction”, this simply means that he is lying, and this lie is completely obvious. This can be expressed in explicit exaggeration or understatement, ascribing to individuals or objects of some unusual properties and so on. At the same time, both interlocutors are well aware that fiction is not true, and therefore the function of such a story is more entertaining than informative.
A fairy tale is a lie, but a hint in it
Not every teacher of literature at a higher educational institution will tell you what a true story is. The problem is not only that their preparation is not so good, but also in itself such a term is used extremely rarely. For example, for a student who knows from childhood what a fairy tale is, the "reality" can only be associated with something old-fashioned and long out of use in the modern language. One of the synonyms of this term - “formerness” - also sounds extremely old-fashioned. This is something word of mouth in villages, often in a whisper or by candlelight. And often such epics have a mystical connotation, that is, they talk about the actions of supernatural forces and are associated with the machinations of the Devil. God-fearing people do not even listen to such “epics”, preferring to just cross themselves several times and reread the Psalter. But among the village youth, retelling of former realities is a frequent occurrence.
Who composes and believes in epics
Understanding what is true is very easy if you familiarize yourself with literature older than the 20th century. For example, various stories about brownies, mermaids, forest spirits and other “evil spirits” in which the main character supposedly saw with their own eyes their tricks - these are epics that feed children before bedtime or in order to make them obey. Of course, for a modern person, all this is nothing more than the costs of mythology and remnants of the past. But for people who still feel the “authentic” breath of past centuries, these epics are a real treasure. The fact is that very often such fairy tales are the only thing that helps to somehow entertain the village youth. They are ideal for meeting around a fire, where the worst thing that can threaten a company is fierce mosquitoes and ticks in the grass. Telling each other about meetings with evil spirits that supposedly happened either to them or to their relatives, they feel real adrenaline. So we can say that the past is a kind of attraction for residents of areas remote from civilization.
Modern reality for progressive people
It’s not news at all that epics have long gone out of fashion, and in their place came stories of a different format. In the camps this practice is still carried out, but its intensity decreases every year. Of course, in our time, the past also exists, it is simply called a little differently. For example, in some sources you can find the so-called "creep pastes", that is, scary stories that supposedly also took place in real life. Some readers believe the authors, some continue to treat them with a healthy share of skepticism. However, they nevertheless fulfill their "frightening" function, therefore, modern users nevertheless imagine what the reality is. Its definition, of course, was slightly modified, but the essence did not change. At all times, people wanted to tickle their nerves, and the reality, whatever it is called, does just that.