Some Definitions, Key Narrative Terms

Narrative=a way of organizing spatial and temporal data into a cause-effect chain of events with a beginning, a middle, and an end that embodies a judgment about the nature of events.   More simply, the process of making sense of the world by telling stories about it, and thereby making the world the subject of stories.

The Story within a Narrative=all the elements in a narrative, both those directly expressed and those clearly inferred.  Everything, in other words, that must have happened over the duration of time, and in the array of spaces, that the narrative covers.

The Plot within a Narrative=everything that is directly related, and only that, in the order that it is related.  Plot is often substantially different from story, often much shorter, and often involving a rearrangement of the order of events.   

The Narration within a Narrative=the actual telling of a narrative, by means of an explicit or implicit ‘voice’ that recounts the narrative, and this includes the tone,  outlook,  character, and function of an explicit, or implicit, narrator.   In short, even when no separate voice is directly, explicitly narrating, narrative theory proposes that a narrative still contains an implicit narrator.  

Character roles=these are standard, common roles that characters in all kinds of different specific narratives play.  For example: hero and villain.

Functions=moments or developments in the plot that are standard, common–i.e., that we find repeated in all kind of specific plots.   For example: ‘appearance of an enigma’, ‘deepening of an enigma’, ‘apparent resolution of an enigma’, ‘actual resolution of an enigma’, ‘challenge to act’, ‘hesitation before acting’,  ‘decision to act’, ‘moment of action in response to decision’, ‘development of trust’, ‘betrayal of trust’, ‘revelation of the false hero as false’,   ‘forbidding of a certain act’, ‘defiance of a prohibition’, ‘solution of a set task’, and ‘punishment of the villain’.  Functions are moments or developments in the plot that move the plot along.

Patterns of equilibrium and disequilibrium=periods of balance, harmony, or reconciliation versus periods of disruption of balance, harmony, and reconciliation involving contestation among opposing forces.   Narratives can be mapped as moving through periods of equilibrium and disequilibrium.

Binary oppositions=pairs of antithetical entities which represent two opposing characteristics or qualities.  Again, narratives can be analyzed in terms of what kinds of binary oppositions they set up, work with and work through, and possibly transform and overcome.  At the least this kind of framework directs our attention to conflicting forces, which, based upon earlier discussions of the structure of plots we know are frequently central to what plots are like and all about (i.e., recall our earlier discussion–and your reading about–catalysts for conflict, confrontations that initiate conflict, story beats that mark key moments in the unfolding and development of conflict, climaxes which represent the conflict at its highest point of intensity, and resolutions of conflict).