11 Examples of a Story Within a Story

Do you remember reading a book where the characters are talking about a story themselves? Much like Russian nesting dolls are placed into larger wooden dolls, a multi-story work can contain multiple narratives within the larger plot.

This can happen when the characters talk about their family or national history to one another, or they can be sharing folklore, or anything that happened before the main story started.

The Purpose of a Story Within a Story

Scriptwriters, screenwriters, and novelists can all use the story-within-a-story technique (also known as frame stories or embedded stories) to embed a narrative inside a main story. The embedded story might be told purely for entertainment, or to present an example to the other characters.

Inner stories often have symbolic significance for the characters in the main story, or there might be parallels between the two, which are meant to reveal a theme or critical information about the main story.

What’s An Example of a Frame Story?

Embedded stories are popular in the fantasy genre. For example, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series uses this technique a lot to provide important back story for the main narrative.

It also occurs substantially in classic books, such as The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. An example of a story within a story in film is The Princess Bride, where Peter Falk shares the tale with Fred Savage.

If you want to read more examples of a story within a story, here are some books that effectively use this technique:

**1. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights by Robert Irwin**

For the past three years, King Shahriyar has slept with a new virgin every night, only to execute her the following morning. In hopes of ending this vicious cycle, Shahrazad volunteers to be one of these virgins, and enchants the king with stories of love, adventure, and mystical wonder for one thousand and one nights.

**2. Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder**

Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder is fond of writing a story within a story. His bestselling work, Sophie’s World, tells about a little girl who finds herself unwittingly signed up for a correspondence course about the history of philosophy with an enigmatic philosopher.

**3. The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder**

The story revolves around a boy who is riding through Europe with his father as they search for the boy’s mother. The boy receives a sticky bun from a mysterious baker, inside of which is a tiny book that unfolds as an enchanting story within a story.

**4. The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder**

Joachim finds a magic advent calendar in a dusty old bookstore. Little does he know that each window of this advent calendar contains a part of a story about a little girl named Elisabet. With every window he opens, he is thrust into a whole new adventure.

**5. Watership Down by Richard Adams**

This fantasy story tells about a group of rabbits who, in response to a doomsday-prophecy, leave their warren in search of a new one. Embedded within the greater narrative are stories of the rabbits’ folklore and hero, which the rabbits tell to one another over a campfire during their journey.

**6. The Sandman by Neil Gaiman**

Some of the books in this series present the characters’ dreams as stories within the main narrative. The main story opens with an occultist trying to capture Death, only to capture her younger brother, Dream.

**7. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad**

This novella by Joseph Conrad features Charles Marlow, who tells his fellow sailors of something that happened in his own life. He tells the main narrative as a flashback and uses the first-person point of view.

**8. Hamlet by William Shakespeare**

William Shakespeare uses the frame story technique in his play Hamlet, which features a play within the main play. The storyline of the embedded play has too much similarity to the events that occur in Hamlet’s life, which prompts him to constantly interrupt the play’s performance.

**9. The Neverending Story by Michael Ende**

This classic coming-of-age book features Bastian, who finds an old book entitled The Neverending Story, which sweeps him away into a fantasy world where he becomes a character in the story himself!

10. Titanic

The movie opens with a journalist interviewing the elderly Rose, a survivor from the Titanic tragedy of 1912. Then we get thrown back into the events surrounding how the younger Rose gets aboard the Titanic and her love story with Jack, all the way to the harrowing experience of the gigantic ship sinking in a matter of hours. But the movie then takes us back to the present-day interview, forming a frame story.

11. The Princess Bride

Based on the novel of the same name, the movie opens with a grandfather reading a book to his sick grandson. Then the movie takes us into the story in the book, with farmhand Westley on a quest to rescue his true love Princess Buttercup.

What’s It Called When You Tell a Story Within a Story?

One technique that uses embedded narratives is the frame story. When you write a frame story, your main narrative itself is already in the format of a story within a story.

One of the most popular examples of a frame story is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In this classic novel, Robert Walton tells the main narrative about Dr. Frankenstein and his monster through a series of letters that Walton himself writes.

Writing a Story Within a Story

If you plan on writing a story within a story, we recommend you read more books that use this technique.

Then, learn more about writing a novel so that you can have the skills necessary for telling a compelling story.

Did you find this post helpful? Let us know in the comments below!

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