There is a shared understanding between storyteller and audience that the events told did not actually happen so fables do not need to convince and their structure is usually simple. They are often very short with few characters – sometimes only two.

Structure is typically the simplest kind of narrative with a beginning, a complication and a resolution. Two characters (often animals) meet, an event occurs and they go on their way with one of them having learned an important lesson about life.

The short and simple structure of the narrative leaves little room for additional details of description or character development.

Dialogue is used to advance the plot or to state the moral, rather than to engage a reader with the characters and their qualities.

Characterisation is limited but specific: A lazy duck was making its way to the river ... A crafty raven was sitting on a branch ...

There is limited use of description because settings are less important than the events that take place. Action and dialogue are used to move the story on because the all-important moral is most clearly evident in what the main characters do and say.

Connectives are an important language feature to show cause and effect and to give coherence to a short narrative.

They are portrayed as simple stereotypes rather than multidimensional heroes or villains.

If your main characters are animals, make them behave like human stereotypes: a brave little ant, a wise old turtle, a cunning fox, a lazy donkey.

Use the main characters to give your fable a title: The Ant and the Elephant.

State the moral of your fable clearly at the end: a wise person always plans ahead.

Establish the setting in the first line and introduce the two main characters as soon as you can.

Give clues to your reader about what might happen: a greedy but impatient fox was watching the chickens from behind a tree.

Don’t add too much detail of description and only use dialogue that helps to tell what happened.

Use connectives when characters talk to one another, to explain or show cause and effect: “If you will give me your hand, I will help you over the river”, said the wolf. “I can’t possibly eat you because I’m a vegetarian,” lied the bear.

Use connectives to show your reader quickly and easily when things happened and how time passed: (One morning... as he was... first he saw... then he saw... When winter came... And then the grasshopper understood...) Questions are often the way one character introduces themself to another in a fable: Why do you howl so loudly? What are you writing so busily in your book, little bird?