Both seem to mean story so I am wondering what the difference between them is.
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2017-06-23T11:24:30.687
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word-choice
What is the difference between hanashi and monogatari?
Generally, the comment of @Kurausukun to your question is correct.

Literally, 話｛はなし｝ _hanashi_ is a story, and 物語｛ものがたり｝ _monogatari_ is the noun
form of 物を語る which means "to tell something" or "to tell a story".

To me, _monogatari_ sounds having more meaningful or longer contents of a
story than that of _hanashi_ , and thus is more suitable to refer to the
contents of a novel.
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はなし（話） is the most basic word for any spoken content, that can be translated
as _talk_ , _story_ , _rumor_ , _argument_ , _report_ , _discourse_ etc. as
far as I can think of off the top of my head.

ものがたり（物語） is an old word that means "story-telling", and due to long-standing
tradition 「X ものがたり」 becomes a fixed expression to say "tale of X", such as
カンタベリー物語 _Canterbury Tales_ or 二都【にと】物語 _A Tale of Two Cities_.

はなし has few special meanings, but we specifically refer to an _episode_ of
[rakugo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakugo) by this word (in this case,
it's usually written in kanji 噺).
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