Collocations for tale - noun

long, rambling | amazing, bizarre, curious, extraordinary, fantastic, magical, marvellous, strange | awful, dire, sad, sorry, terrible
the sorry tale of his marriage breakdown

dreary
She was tired of hearing the same dreary tale of drunkenness and violence.

chilling, gruesome, hair-raising, horror, macabre | mysterious, spooky | funny, humorous, witty | foolish | lurid, spicy, tawdry | fanciful, far-fetched, incredible, tall, unlikely
a tall tale that would fool no one

old wives'' | rags-to-riches
the rags-to-riches tale of an orphan who becomes a star

epic, heroic
an epic tale of courage and heroism

cautionary, moral, morality | folk, traditional | childhood | fairy
(often figurative) Winning the French Open was a fairy-tale end to her career.

romantic

narrate, regale sb with, relate, tell (sb)
She regaled us with tales of her wild youth.

invent, make up, spin

begin | unfold | concern sb/sth, involve sb/sth | be set in …
a tale set in 19th-century Moscow

be based on sth

~ about
a tale about a hungry snake

~ of
tales of adventure the curious tale of the man who sold his hair

a tale of woe
(= about failure, bad luck, etc.),

(have) a tale to tell
Each of the survivors had a terrible tale to tell.

tell tales
(= to say things about sb that are untrue or that they would prefer to be secret)