本文係以「雜而多端」的六朝志怪小說中最具代表性的名作《搜神記》為例，提出討論，希望能夠經由此書，進而觀察到整個六朝志怪小說之敘事特性。首先，就志怪小說之「資料來源」。其次，從「資料來源」論述「敘事策略」。最後，從《搜神記》之「文史特性」與「虛實之辨」兩點切入，強化人們對於「六朝志怪小說之敘事特性」之理解。 六朝時期之文人學士，對於志怪故事載錄之具體貢獻，大體有二：一是將原本強調現場互動及質樸表現形態之口語宣講方式，改以更具文人氣味之書面文字予以記錄；一是將前代書籍所載，同時切合其編纂體例者加以收錄，使之成為志怪小說體式的一部分。在編纂過程中，志怪作者將其異於前人之敘事策略充分展露，或使之從前人已然設定的條件規範中順利走出，或改以不同於口語之表現形式呈現，此當即本文所謂之「六朝志怪小說之敘事特性」。

Using the most representative Sou-shen-chi (Accounts of the Supernatural) as example, the author hopes to analyze and demonstrate the narrative characteristics of the multifarious corpus of Six Dynasties chih-kuai 志怪fiction. First, the article will discuss the sources of these stories; secondly, the narrative strategies in presenting the stories will be focused on. Then finally, the peculiar phenomenon of having the qualities of history and literature, the distinction between fact and fiction, as seen in Sou-shen-chi, will lead to the summing-up of the narrative nature in Six Dynasties chih-kuai stories. The contribution of Six Dynasties men of letters to chih-kuai fiction can be summed up in two aspects: firstly, to change the unsophisticated and interactive oral nature of storytelling into written form and record them in literary ways; secondly, they tended to collect and incorporate documents of similar nature into story matrix to transform them into more complex stories. In the process of doing so, they brought into the chih-kuai stories something that were not existent in the original stories and therefore alter the nature of the original chih-kuai stories. All these doings make the chih-kuai stories to appear as a distinctive narrative sub-genre with special generic features.