Narrative what

What is narrative?
A narrative is considered a chain of events in a cause-effect relationship occurring in time and space; a narrative begins with on situation, a series of changes occurs according to a pattern of cause and effect before a new situation arises that brings out the end of the narrative; our engagement with the story depends on our understanding of the pattern of change and stability, cause and effect, time and space
A narrative develops from an initial situation of conflict thus inflaming a series of events caused by the conflict, the resolution to the conflict included; causality, space, and time are important to narrative yet other factors can govern a narrative (i.e parallelism)
Plot and story
Events may not be explicitly presented, yet audience recognise the presence of material that is extraneous to the story world; there is a distinction between story and plot
The set of all the events in a narrative, both explicit and inferred constitutes the story; the total world of the story action is called the film’s diegesis
The term plot is used to describe everything visibly and audibly present in the film, including all the story events that are directly depicted, material that is extraneous to the story world (i.e opening credits) which are nondiegetic elements
Plot and story overlap in one respect and diverge in others; the plot explicitly presents certain story events, so these events are common to both domains; the story goes beyond the plot in suggesting some diegetic events that we never witness; the plot goes beyond the story world by presenting nondiegetic images and sounds that may affect our understanding of the action

From the standpoint of the storyteller, the story is the sum total of all the events in the narrative; the storyteller can present some of these events directly (that is, make them part of the plot), can hint at events that are not presented, and can ignore other events; in a sense, the storyteller makes a story into a plot
From the perceiver’s standpoint, all before them is the plot; the arrangement of material in the film as it stands; we create the story in our minds on the basis of cues in the plot; we recognise when the plot presents nondiegetic material
Story-plot distinction affects all three aspects of narrative: causality, time, and space
Cause and effect
Usually the agents of care and effect are characters; by triggering and reacting to events, character play roles within the film’s formal system
Characters may be persons, entities like persons, extraterrestrial or anything
They typically have a visibly body,  yet can only be a voice
Characters have traits: attitudes, skills, habits, taste, psychological drives, and any other qualities that distinguish the character
A character is given traits that will play causal roles in the overall story action
Not all causes and effects originate with characters; may also be environment, however human desires and goals usually enter the action to develop the narrative
The spectator active seeks to connect events by means of cause and effect, by looking for causal motivation; this involves the planting of information in advance of a scene
The plot can also lead us to infer causes and effects and thus build up a total story
Whenever a film creates a mystery, it suppresses certain story causes and persons only effects in the plot
The plot may present causes but withhold story effects, promoting suspense and uncertainty in the viewer and a plot’s withholding of effects is thus most disruptive at the end of a film
Time
Time shapes our understanding of narrative action with assistance from story-plot distinction which clarifies
We construct story time on the basis of what the plot presents; constructing the film’s story out of its plot means that the viewer is engaged in trying to put events in chronological order to assign them some duration and frequency
Temporal order     we are accustomed to films that present events our of story order; we mentally rearrange the events into the order in which they would logically occur when plot shuffles story order (i.e through flashback)
Temporal duration     a film’s plot selects certain stretches of story duration; the sum off all the slices of story duration yields an overall plot duration; there is also screen duration which is the time of the viewing; the relationships among story duration, plot duration, and screen duration are complex and plot duration selects from story duration while screen duration selects from overall plot duration; the plot can use screen duration to override story time (such as screen duration expanding story duration)
Temporal frequency     whereby an event is seen more than once, there is an increased frequency while may allow us to see action in various ways; the plot may also supply information so that we may understand the event in a new context when it reappears
We actively participate in making sense of the narrative film; the plot supplies cues about chronological sequence, the time spans of the actions, and the number of times an event occurs, and its up to the viewer to make assumptions and inferences and to form expectations
Space
Space is fundamental; events occur in well-defined locales; story and plot can manipulate space
The place of the story action is normally that of the plot but sometimes plot leads us to infer other locales as part of the story; the narrative may ask us to imagine spaces and actions that are never shown
We can introduce an adieu akin to the concept of screen duration; cinema employs screen space: the visible space within the farm
Just as screen duration selects certain plot spans for presentations, screen space selects portions of plot space
Openings, closings, and patterns of development
A narrative’s use of causally, time, and space usually involves a change from an initial situation to a final situation; a film does not just start, it begins as the opening provides a basis for what is to come by initiating audience into the narrative
The portion of the plot that lays out important story events and character traits in the opening is called the ‘exposition’; openings raise our expectations by setting up a specific range of possible causes for and effects of what we see; often referred to as the ‘setup’
As the plot proceeds, the causes and effects will define narrower patterns of development; there is no exhaustive list of possible plot patterns but many are common:
– change in knowledge: a character learns something in the course of the action, with the most crucial knowledge coming at the final turning point of the plot
– goal-orientated: a character takes steps to achieve a desired object or state of affairs; plots based on ‘searches’ would be instances of the goal plot; a variation on the goal-orientated plot pattern is the ‘investigation’
– time and space: framing situations in the present may initiate a series of flashbacks showing how events led up to the present situation; the plot may also create a specific duration for the action, a ‘deadline’; the plot may create patterns of repeated action via cycles of events; a character may be confined to a single locale thus space defines plot pattern in this sense
For any pattern of development, the spectator will create specific expectations in which as the film trains the viewer in its particular form, these expectations become more and more precise
A film doesn’t simply stop, it ends; the narrative will typically resolve its causal issues by bringing the development to a high point, or a ‘climax’ in which the action is presented as having a narrow range of possible outcomes thus settling causal issues that have run through the film and resolving the chains of cause and effect (yet this can be otherwise; the narrative can be anticlimatical or remain open)
NARRATION: THE FLOW OF STORY INFORMATION
A plot presents or implies story information; a spectators interest can be aroused and manipulated by carefully divulging story information at various points
The plot may arrange cues in ways that withhold information for the sake of curiosity or surprise; or the plot may supply information in such a way as to create expectations or increase suspense- all theses processes constitute ‘narration’, the plot’s way of distributing story information in order to achieve specific effects; narration is the moment-by-moment process that guides us in building the story out of the plot
Range of story information
Range refers to how broad the viewers knowledge is after plot cues are revealed; if the narration is ‘unrestricted’ then the audience knows a lot, and such extremely knowledgable narration is often called ‘omniscient narration’
A film’s narration may be ‘restricted’ to what a character knows, through lack of expectations influencing this too
A film may oscillate between restricted and unrestricted presentation of story information
The plot’s range of story information creates a ‘hierarchy of knowledge’ in which the viewer knows more than, less than or as much as the characters do
Restricted narration tends to create greater curiosity and surprise for the viewer yet unrestricted narration helps build suspense (Hitchcock)
Depth of story information
A films narration also manipulates the depth of our knowledge; that is, how deeply the plot plunges into a character’s psychological states.. just as there is a spectrum between restricted and unrestricted narration, there is a continuum between ‘objectivity’ and ‘subjectivity’
A plot might confine us wholly to information about what characters say and do: their external behaviour; the narration is thus relatively ‘objective’
Visual or auditory point of view offers a degree of subjectivity (perceptual subjectivity)
Mental subjectivity allows greater depth of story information through delving into character’s mind; narratives can present story information at various depths of the character’s psychological life
Range and depth of knowledge are independent variables thus the term point of view is ambiguous
Most films insert subjective moments into an overall framework of objectivity
Most films take objective narration as a baseline from which we may depart in search of subjective depth but to which we will return
The narrator
Narration is the process by which the plot presents story information to the spectator; this may shift between restricted and unrestricted ranges of knowledge and varying degrees of objectivity (neglect of emotion) and subjectivity (regard to emotion); narration may also use a ‘narrator’, some specific agent who purports to be telling the story:
– character narrator
– non character narrator (such as in documentaries)
The viewers process of picking up cues, developing expectations, and constructing an ongoing story out of the plot will be partially shaped by what the narrator reveals or does not reveal