The short answer:
A character-based narration.

Slightly longer answer:

A character-based narration of their struggles in overcoming obstacles and reaching an important goal.

This definition suggests the elements you need to create a story; it suggests that you need a plot, characters, emotion, problems overcome and resolution. And while this is often true in a work of fiction, other forms of storytelling may only use a couple of these elements.

The everyday use of the word ‘story’ also covers:

• A news article in a newspaper, magazine, or on TV.
• A piece of gossip or a rumour.
• A lie, as in ‘someone is telling stories,’ is referencing fiction.

The one thing we can say for sure is that a story is an account of a sequence of events, either in someone’s life or in the development of something, which becomes the ‘character of the story.’ 

So you can “tell the story of Paris”, or “the story of how a book is made”, just as you can tell “the story of that time you met that famous lady in that movie we both like.”
These all have one thing in common: there is a sequence of events strung together in a structured way in each case.

A story doesn’t have to be chronological; it can jump back and forth in time, so you don’t have to start at the start and end at the end. Sometimes it’s more exciting to hold something back, so the reader doesn’t have the complete picture until right at the end. This will create an ‘ah-ha!’ moment. But you still have to present the facts so that they unfold in a narrative.

What a story is not

The definition of a story is reasonably nebulous and very contextual:

• It’s often imaginary but not necessarily.
• It’s often about real people and events but not necessarily.
• It’s usually told for entertainment or illustration purposes, but it could just be the ramblings of an aunt who likes to hear herself speak.

The word ‘storytelling’ has become a buzzword for marketers. However, a product description is not a story. ‘telling the story of a brand’ is not evidence that your brand is good at what it does. These are facts. Facts, statements, catchy phrases, features, benefits, conversations and illustrative descriptions are not a story.

It’s challenging to make a product benefit into a story. Not challenging because telling a story is hard, in fact, it’s quite innate. Storytelling is hard because you need to understand how your product is used, and you need to be quite brave and creative for the story to resonate.
A story is not always (or even usually) the best way to communicate to the customer. If your customer can’t get emotionally invested in your product, then storytelling will probably come across as insincere and not very believable (as in the above example).

Key elements of a story:

There is a great deal of confusion about what a story is exactly. For example, a novel doesn’t have to have a story in it, and when businesses talk about ‘storytelling,’ they mean ‘a convincing argument.’

There are only a couple of things you need for a story:

• It needs to move in a particular direction. So it has to have a plot. A storyline(s), scenarios or a chain of events.
• Characters, or a subject that have the qualities of a character.

So we can talk about Tom’s house:

“It’s a quiet and restful place while the family is sleeping. But the house is chaotic with the morning hustle and bustle right now. It has only just taken over, and it will last a short while; when the soothing calm of 9 am descends. At that point, everyone will be off at work and school. The house can rest its creaking boards then and settle back down to a quiet day, undisturbed. Until night falls and a different rhythm happens.”

This story is not of a person, though the ‘character’ of the house has qualities that we might consider human such as ‘calm’ and ‘rest.’ It is a snapshot in time, but it does offer a glimpse of the past and the future creating a sequence of events. 

Many other qualities are typical of a story, but if crafted very well, a story can all happen in the reader’s mind. We have a fantastic ability to fills in the blanks of a story. Meaning that if you are very good, you don’t need many of the elements required for a story. Your brain will invent a beginning, middle and end.

One of my favourite examples is this heartbreaking 6-word story:

“For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”

Earnest Hemingway

I picture an unfortunate couple giving up on having children, but at one point, they were so sure they would have a child that they went so far as to buy clothes for it. Though it’s more plausible that a parent just got too many baby clothes early on, and this particular pair was the ugliest of the lot.

The important thing is that these six words don’t have a beginning, middle and end. You have come in at the end. But your imagination fills in the gaps in the story, supplying the backstory.