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This chapter aims to present the disciplinary points of departure, key assumptions, and analytical tools of small stories research, a paradigm for narrative and identities analysis that was developed in collaboration with Michael Bamberg. Small stories research at first was put forth as a counter‐move to dominant models of narrative studies that: defined narrative restrictively and on the basis of textual criteria; and privileged a specific type of narrative, in particular the long, relatively uninterrupted, teller‐led accounts of past events or of one's life story, typically elicited in research interview situations. Small stories research has been intended as a model for, not a model of narrative analysis. The broader context of small stories research is to be found in anti‐essentialist views of self, society, and culture that stress the multiplicity, fragmentation, context‐specificity, and performativity of our communication practice.