Fabula and syuzhet

Okay, kiddo, let me explain a little story thing called fabula and syuzhet.

Fabula is like the whole story, but not the words we use to tell it. It's the events that happen in the story, in the order they actually did. Imagine you're baking cookies with me. What happens first? We mix the ingredients, right? That's the fabula.

Syuzhet, on the other hand, is how the story is actually told. It's the order in which we say things out loud or type them on a page, and what details we include or leave out. So maybe when we're telling the cookie-baking story, we start with the part where the flour gets all over the place, because that's a really funny part, even though it didn't happen first. That's the syuzhet.

So, fabula is the events that happen in the story, and syuzhet is how we choose to present those events to our audience. Got it?