In the early years, the "Girl Guides Gazette" served as the magazine for Guides and Guiders alike. Possibly as a result, one regular feature was a serial story. This usually ran over several months, with the end result being book-length - indeed some went on to be published as books. These usually featured the exploits of a Patrol, and after the first week, a synopsis was provided at the start of each episode. Each was illustrated, usually with pen-and-ink drawings. These stories were intended to be educational, so would often include heavy hints about honesty, bravery, and putting skills learned at Guides into practical use. Some stories, however, were more wide-ranging adventure stories, with a lighter link to Guiding.
By the end of World War 1, "The Guide" magazine was launched, separating out the magazines for girls from those for Leaders. The Guide was mainly focussed on the Guide age group, but did feature a regular page for Brownies, and a monthly section specifically aimed at Rangers.
The Brownie pages usually included a short tale, usually in the style of a fairy tale or anthropomorphic story featuring young animals getting into minor scrapes and being rescued from them. There was also a single-strip cartoon, often featuring animals in clothes, teddy bears and toys. The page was often double-sided, but printed sideways, so that in theory it could be cut out and folded to make a little booklet.
The stories aimed at the older group still tended to take up two or more spreads of densely packed text, with a few pen-and-ink drawings, but the subject matter was now wider, including adventure in exotic locations, adventure and detective stories. Some serials which transferred to book form included the semi-factual adventures of "Peg" and her Patrol of Guides from Walworth in London. These stories were unusual in featuring working-class Guides as rounded characters - and in not shying away from the realities of life that some of them faced, such as parents who were frequently absent or alcoholic, working in factories which were injurious to health, or the need to save up for the parts of the uniform which couldn't be homemade in inexpensive casement cloth.
The "Girl Guide Gazette", which became "The Guider" was mainly focussed on training articles, but did include some fiction or humour articles in order to put across particular points - such as the account of a District Rally or an Annual General Meeting where everything which could go wrong did so on the same day.
By the 1930s the serial stories were well established in "The Guide", with many authors being regular contributors (some of them being on the magazine's staff). The 1920s and 1930s were a heyday for children's books and a number of the stories from "The Guide" ended up between hardback covers.
In "The Guider", the fiction was becoming more message-laden - although there was scope for the occasional humour piece, other stories took a more deliberate course - such as the two serials about Dr Harriet Gore, which were published as "Harriet Takes the Field".
In the 1940s, fiction became more restricted, and for the older age groups, more functional. Brownies continued to have their fiction story and their cartoon strip, but paper rationing meant they only got one side of a page not two, the story was shorted, and they remained whimsical, not touching on the realities - however, as their page was located in "The Guide" magazine, every other page of which did focus on the realities, it's hard to judge how effective the escapism was. The magazine itself was gradually cut back in size - although the page size became slightly larger, paper rationing meant that over time it went from being 8 large sheets of paper stapled to only two, and that on a rough newsprint instead of the previous magazine-quality paper. Some Guide fiction was published, but it was 'functional fiction' - often more or less propaganda encouraging Guide Patrols to dig for victory, or fundraise for war charities, in the guise of telling the adventures of a fictional Guide Patrol. Rangers got more limited space in the magazine, and their pages were often functional ones looking as aspects of their syllabus, a reflection of most of them being engaged in war work due to the focus on pre-service training.
By the 1950s paper rationing was over and "The Guide" magazine had grown back to a more normal size again, with the format broadly returning to that of the 1920s and 1930s. The fiction tended to focus more on adventures located within Britain, but could still involve adventure and intrigue. Brownie stories featured less whimsy and more the adventures of fictional Brownies, trying to do their good turns and sometimes finding themselves caught up in incidents where they can put the skills they had learned to good use.
In the Guider, fiction was less common and tended again to be 'stories with a message', as a different way of providing training material, rather than as fiction.
The late 1950s also saw the introduction of annuals, for Brownies and for Guides - these continued until the 1990s for Guides, the early 2000s for Brownies - and Rainbow annuals were produced for a few years only too. These each contained a number of fiction stories, and sometimes a story-in-pictures. The stories tended to cover broadly similar themes each year (and indeed, the same stories tended to be repeated every few years, sometimes being swapped between Guiding and Scouting annuals). The early decades' stories were also collected and published in book form, by the annuals' editor, Robert Moss.
The early 1960s carried on where the 1950s had left off - but towards the end of the 1960s there was a move towards promoting the new 8-point programme, which launched in 1968. A number of stories on the Guide pages were used to trail or promote this.
Meantime, two new magazines launched - "The Brownie" and "Senior Branch News" which later became "The Ranger". The Brownie magazine featured short stories as well as cartoons. The Ranger, however, tended to stick to either badgework information, or factual articles, not fiction. The Ranger struggled for sales - it was caught in the vicious circle that the readers wanted more content and colour printing for the price, such as other magazines of the day offered - but the readership numbers weren't high enough to generate the money needed to increase the size of the magazine or print it in colour. The magazine folded in the late 1970s and Ranger content moved to "The Guider" magazine.
In "The Guider" fiction tended to take the form of training, or humour - the 'Diary of a District Commissioner' started, a semi-fictional account of the experiences of an imaginary DC in a lively District.
The 1970s were the heyday for "The Brownie" magazine, and it regularly featured a short serial illustrated on the front cover and featuring a particular Six of fairy folk. In addition there was usually a short fiction story inside, often featuring the adventures of an individual Brownie (or would-be Brownie).
"The Guide" became "Today's Guide" and attempts were made by the authors to modernise the fiction a little - acknowledging that some Guides might wear make-up and attend youth clubs and school discos - but only to a modest extent - stories were still more likely to feature Guide Patrols going off on hikes (despite increasing urbanisation and increasing rules regarding lighting fires outside making it less plausible that a Guide Patrol could 'just head off' and get permission to light fires outdoors without having an adult present.
The 1980s saw a new cover star for "The Brownie" magazine - SuperBrownie - who used her special powers during her adventures. The fiction inside the magazine, however, was little altered, still featuring girls using their Brownie skills to do good turns or get out of scrapes.
"Today's Guide" tried to modernise, in time becoming "Guide Patrol" - but by the end of the 1980s it was more likely to be read by Guiders than by actual Guides, and it was soon to close.
In the 1980s the 'diary' format continued to be used in "The Guider", featuring at different times a DC, a Brownie Guider, and a Guider's husband. But over time, these were dropped, leaving only the factual articles. "The Guider" was renamed "Guiding".
The Brownie magazine lasted into the 1990s, but it, too, was more-read by Guiders than by Brownies themselves. Although attempts were made at a magazine for Rainbow Guides - initially as a supplement in The Brownie, and then as a standalone magazine - it didn't achieve the necessary readership and lasted only a few issues. Guiding continued through the 1990s and to the present day, but fiction (full-fiction or semi-fiction) did not appear.