The issue addressed in this paper is the relationship between form in fictional prose and form in other uses of language, particularly those uses important in composition theory. Form in composition theory has traditionally had two ways of identifying units of analysis: (1) the sentence and semantic units, and (2) pragmatic and rhetorical units. The focus of the paper is on pragmatics and rhetoric. The paper argues that fictional narratives have the underlying form of different types of ordinary speech events and that an understanding of this form helps explain some of the problems young readers sometimes have and some of the critical problems posed by literary critics. Distancing, processing, and modeling are examined, with emphases on the distancing dimension, the processing characteristics, and the modeling characteristics of speech events. Three types of speech events are considered: conversational, report story, and prototype exposition (one type of formal history). The misreading of stories is discussed, with special attention given to: assimilation or the following of rules; the misreading of fact without context; misreading the narrator as unchanging; misreading distance, choice, and boredom; and accommodation, or the modification of rules. (HOD)