If young readers (adolescents) are introduced to a range of story structures and less structured texts (or "deviant narratives"), it may encourage the development of more diverse and accommodating schemata and the capacity to make inferences about the link between discourse units. It is, after all, a basic principle of recent narrative theory that texts instruct in their own readings. Comprehension is not just information-processing and recall; it lies in the (re)creative interactions between text and reader. And reading is an activity that is not ultimately separate from writing; each is a re-creative act interpenetrated by the other. In an experimental sequence conducted in Australia, Year 11 students read three narratives, all of which deviate in some way from orthodox plot structure and frustrate "normal" narrative expectations. Through a questionnaire and discussion their reactions were elicited, and they were encouraged to discover how some "stories" operate on different narrative principles, and how in their reading they were actively constructing the meaning of the text. To continue the experiment, the students were also asked to complete a story whose first page was supplied, without the author's name. (Student commentaries are included.) (NKA)