How to explain difference between "telling stories" and "telling lies"?

[SuperSixy]

I'm a professional creative writer and my DS has started to develop a real gift for storytelling - he will spontaneously begin to spin really imaginative tales.

Recently I have been trying to explain to him the importance of telling the truth. Today I told him I loved his stories and he asked me whether telling stories was telling lies.

I tried to explain and got really stuck! Has anyone got any suggestions on how to explain this to a 3 year old?

Thanks x

Could you explain that it's to do with whether you expect the hearer to believe it or not?

I read your post yesterday and thought it was a really interesting question. I was going to post last night but couldn't find a good answer. I thought about it all day. I haven't come up with a good answer but I wondered whether you should try asking your ds what he thinks the difference between lieing and story telling is.
I'd love to know what his answer is, purely for my own curiosity.

Telling stories refers to imagination/pretend scenarios
Telling lies refers to real life ones

This is an interesting question and one that I have been over with each of my DC in turn, usually in the context of dreams. They would start out telling me about an actual dream that they had and would then get carried away, fabricating the rest. I have always encouraged them to say "imagine if..." to make the distinction between what is 'real' (ie what they actually dreamt) and what is made up/lies (ie what would have made the dream even better).

DD is 10 and we are just working through lying by omission atm .