This article suggests that narratives' importance for social change may be understood by examining specific elements of narrative syntax - key rhetorical tropes within stories, and story genres. It argues that these stylistic elements generate social connections that themselves support and stimulate social change. The article uses Young's (2006) theorisation of responsibility and global justice in terms of connection, to suggest how narratives may support or generate progressive social change. It then examines narrative tropes and genres of similarisation and familiarisation at work in narratives produced around the HIV pandemic, and the limits of those tropes and genres for supporting and catalysing social change.