Extremely little basis for appalling narrative (9)
I believe the answer is:
chronicle
'narrative' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'extremely little basis for appalling' is the wordplay.
'extremely' means to remove the middle letters.
'basis for' says to put letters next to each other.
'appalling' becomes 'chronic'.
'little' with its centre removed is 'le'.
'le' after 'chronic' is 'CHRONICLE'.
(Other definitions for chronicle that I've seen before include "(Make a) historical record" , "(Keep an) historical record" , "Historical account" , "Narrative description of past events" , "Continuous record of events in order of time" .)