Marie-Laure Ryan describes how in recent years, the term “narrative” has become ‘diluted [in] its meaning’.  She stressed that in order to achieve a universal, transmedial definition for narratives, we must simultaneously broaden our concepts of narrative as a verbal form, while at the same time narrow down the texts which are thought to constitute a narrative.

Ryan assigns her conditions of narrativity to four dimensions; Spatial, Temporal, Mental and Formal and Pragmatic, each of which have their own strict set of rules and guidelines I don’t feel confident in accurately unpacking.

What Ryan’s main argument as to what defines a narrative appears to be, is a text that is able to provoke a certain representation of a story of thought in the minds of audiences.  Each narrative will create this imagery to varying degrees, correlating with how many of the four dimensions apply to it.  Narrative is a combination of both story and discourse and evokes an imagery or cognitive construct that relate on a personal basis that other such texts are unable to conjure.

Ryan, Marie-Laure. Avatars of Story. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.