Introduction

Narrative texts can be broken into three groups of elements Story, Production, and Audience. This page looks at Story Elements. For a more detailed explaination some elements have links to sub pages.

Story Elements

These elements constitute the actual story. Generally these can be thought of as being what you would find in a printed novel. In fact a majority of feature texts are based on novels. Some of the skills learnt studying novels in English can be useful.

Story and Plot.

A narrative text is made up of two parts - story and plot. The story has some sort of begining, middle, and end. It covers all the events that a character encounters during the time between the begining and end of the period encompased by the narrative. Naturally it is usually imposible to show every detail of the life of every character in the narrative - do you want to watch a character sleep for eight hours? Often there is an implied set of events that occur before the begining of the narrative or that occur after the end of the narrative. For example, Hitchcocks The Birds ends suddenly and in many ways fails to resolve the situation.

Plot on the other hand is the parts of the narrative that we as an audience actulally see on screen and hear via the soundtrack. This may include non-diegetic elements such as sound that the characters cannot hear, titles and subtitles. For example the sharp playing of cellos in the opening titles of Hitchcock's Psycho is a accompanied by equally sharp drawn shapes which shatter and splinter like glass to imply the spliting of lifes normality.

Genre

Genre can be defined as the placement of a narrative text into a category. There is generally a set of 'rules' to which the text fits into for it to 'fit' a given genre. Older films are usually relatively easy to categorise and often were specifically made to conform to a given genre. Westerns, musicals, film noir, and science fiction are well known examples. However, as television moved cinema to an outing rather than a regular fixture in peoples lives from the late 1940s there was a bluring of the sharp lines between genres. Today, texts may combine a number of genres. For example, Baz Lehrmann's Moulin Rouge has elements of comedy, tradgety, wrapped in a musical; Pulp Fiction has elements of film noir, comedy, action, and thriller.

Setting

Broadly speaking setting refers to where the narrative takes place. Setting is closely linked to other story elements such as time period and character delevelopment, as well as production elements such as mise en scene and costume. Over time we learn visual clues that subconciously tell us when and where a narrative is taking place. Different versions of a given narrative may be set in different times and places. Try looking up the various filmed versions of Romeo and Juliet on imdb.com. (For example, Baz Lehrmann's verion is set in Los Angeles in the future, while Franco Zefferelli's 1968 version is filmed in the real Verona against buildings built in the time of Shakespere.)

Time Period

As with the setting this can have a impact on the audiences expectations. In Lehrmann's Romeo and Juliet many of the characters drive cars, shoot modern hand guns and the opening sequence is introduced via a televsion news report. Clearly these were not present in Shakesperes 16th centrury. Nonetheless, narratives can span large time frames. For example, Orlando spans many centuries, and the characters of television series Black Adder are set in a different century for each season.

Characters

Characters are the people (and sometimes the people like animals or machines) who tell (progress) the narrative. Without their presence there is generally no narrative. (Can you think of a narrative text without people or people like animalsor machines?) A narrative must in some way establish who the character/s is/are and then devevelop them in some way that keeps the audience engaged.

Furthermore, to enable a conflict to occur most texts have a protagonist (usually a major character who pushes the narrative forward. The story is often told from that characters point of view -see below.) and an antagonist.

Establishment

Establishing who a character is and their importance in the narrative depends a great deal on the stucture and genre of the text

Development

Relationships

Narrative Possibilities

Narrative possibilities are the twists and turns that the narrative may take. These possibilities are usually associated with the Plot and determine which course a charater takes through the narrative. One example takes place in Singin' in the Rain. Cosmo has a flat tyre and the protagonist Don is mobbed by his fans. Don escapes by climing on the roof of a tram and leaping into Kathy Seldon's passing car. Kathy - a dancer - is going to the same party as Don. A romance between Don and Kathy ensues. If Cosmo had not had a flat tyre Don would not have had to escape his fans, and whilst he may have seen Kathy at the party, Don would probably not have noticed Kathy exept as a member of a chorus line. Thus whilst the background story line of the transition from silent to sound movies would still have existed the narrative possibilities of conflict between Lena, Don and Kathy may not have been possible.

Two other examples of texts that are based soley on altered narrative possibilities are Sliding Doors and Run Lola Run. Both texts show how when one small thing is changed the overall story of a character is altered.

Case and Effect.

Cause and effect is linked closely with Narrative Possibilities. Put simply one event causes something to happen, the effect of this event leads to another and so forth. For example, we don't do up our shoe laces (cause) we trip over and cut the palms of our hands (effect). In a text, a series causes and their subsequent effect make up the plot. By changing one cause, the narrative possibilities are altered and the effect (and therefore the plot) is altered.

Character Motivation

We are all motivated to do things. Even if those things are basic needs such as getting food. Similarly the characters in a text are motivated to do things. If the main characters do not do things there will be no plot or story. Within the plot the character must be motivivated to do something. There is usually a causal link between the plot events and the actions of a character. In Hitchcocks North by Northwest the main character Roger O. Thornhill is motivated to discover who is trying to kill him and why. A second motivation is Thornhill's love for a character Eve Kendall, of whom he is unsure of whether she is on the side of good or evil.

Multiple Storylines

As the term suggests multiple storylines occur in a text when two or more storys are being told. There may be two or more protagonists in the text who are some how linked, they may not even meet in the plot, or there are strong links between characters. An example is Crash.

Stucturing of Time

Structuring of time is the arrangement of events in the narratives plot, and can be divided into a number of subgroups. All storys have a begining middle and end, and as we have already seen the plot may not show every detail of the story.

Linear.

All narratives have a begining, a middle, and an end. A Linear narrative arranges the begining, middle, and end in that order. Linear (from the word line) suggests a straight line and plot events are told one after the other in the natural order that they would occur in real life. Short flashback sequences usually do not alter a linear narrative.

Non Linear

In a Non Linear narrative the plots events are not told in the order they would occur in real life. Events are told out of sequence which may be used as a way to hold the attention of the audience.

Circular

A circular narrative starts at one point and goes back (like a giant flashback) tells the story (usually in a linear form) and ends at the point where it started. An example is Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge. At the begining of the text Christian sits at his typewriter lamenting the death of Satine. The story then goes back a full year (a title says 'one year ago') and the story (punctuated by Christian at his typewriter) is told from that point to the present.

Order, Duration, Frequency.

The order in which events are shown in a text is important and is related to whether the text is Linear, Non Linear or Circular. It is also related the the way in which an event is put together in the text - this is directly related to the editing of the scene - a production element.

The duration that a shot remains on screen is also a combination of story and production elements. As a story element it relates to amount of time an event is given in terms of the overall story. Shots can be sped-up to give a sense of urgency or slowed down to emphasise an event. Examples of this are when something very fast occurs such as a car crash or explosion (these are often shown in muliple angles - see also Frequency below.) Sometimes a "superhuman" feat might happen (especially in superhero and action films) and this is slowed down to emphasise the power of the character. This is sometimes refered to as the 'Six Million Dollar Man effect' after the exensive use of the effect was made in the 1970s television show The Six Million Dollar Man. In the show Steve Austin was often shown in slow motion to show off the power of his bionic limbs.

Frequency refers to the number of times the same is event is shown. Usually, a shot is shown only once from one angle. However, to ephasise something it is sometimes shown a number of times. An example of this is when an explosion occurs. It might be shown five or six time from different angles.

Contraction and Expansion

Contraction and expansion of time is a technque that shortens or lengthens the time it takes for a plot event to take place. This is best explained with examples. It may takes a person three minutes to walk down a stretch of road. That person may simply be walking, as a viewer of the narrative this may not be very exciting! In a narrative we can contract or shorten time by showing the person walking and in the next shot show them at the point in the road where the next plot event happens.

Expansion of time is the opposite effect. An event may take longer to occur in the narrative than it would normally take in real life. The obvious example is the use of slow motion cameras. These cameras may take 100s of frames per second (a regular film camera takes 24 frames per second) and when played at normal speed the action is slowed. Another example might be one that seems to occur. After a very fast action sequence, the next sequence, although it occurs a normal speed, may seem to be slower or take more time because our minds have become accousomed to the fast pace of the action sequence and have not readjusted to the 'real' pace. An example of this perception can be seen after a long period of driving at 100km/h when you slow to a spot the road seems to appear to be going backwards away from you.

Point of View

In filmed texts there are two definitions of Point of View. One is a Story element, the other a Production element. Both are linked to character.

Character

This defininition of Point of View relates to Character. It is the vantage point of the character telling the story, the narrator, or the central character. It is through this character (person) that the narrative is told. Generally, although not always, this character has the most screen time.

Other

This definition relates to whose eyes the audience is seeing the action. It is though we are inside the characters head and we are looking through their eyes. Perhaps the most pronounced example of this is in Being John Malkovich in which characters enter a portal that allows them into head of Malkovich. See here for more information on Point of View as a Production element.

Narrative Progression

Narrative Progression is a term which ties all of the above story elements together. It describes how a text moves forward, in other words how it progresses. Progression is the journey from point A to point B. How does the story get from it's beggining to its end? In a text what is the story saying and how does it get there. An example, might be travel from Ringwood to the City, The character might drive a car. The text would need to cover the numerous events and obsticals that occur such as traffic lights, whereas if the character caught the train she might simply sit down, put on her iPod and doze the journey away. The end result is the same - arrival at the City, but the progression has been very different.