In the example of a large body of biographical documentaries and autodokumentaries texts of
Russian foreign we attempt to examine the theoretical and methodological question about the
importance of the story as a special mechanism for the creation and perception documental works.
Different genres of documental prose are considered (biographies, memoirs, portraits, autobiographies,
letters, diaries) in terms of their narrative organization. For such genres as biographies,
autobiographies, memoirs we concludes about fruitfulness of so-called «parsing» (G. O. Vinokur)
plot, allowing to build human biography not chronological, but the philosophical and psychological
way. In relation to the diaries, letters, notebooks a special type of plot is released – receptive
plot, generated, on the one hand, by extra-literary reality, and on the other hand – reconstituted
and existing during the readership reception.