Telling Stories - The Media's Use of Narrative

The aims of thias Factsheet are to
-introduce and define the way conventional narrative structure is used in media texts
-discuss different uses of the conventional narrative structure
-provide example of media texts to demonstrate how narrative is used and its relationship with other media concepts

All media texts tell stories. the structure of these is called the narrative. The events in a story are called the plot but when narrative is discussed, it's the structure of the story rather than the events themselves that are focussed on. Certain genres of media text often use specific structures to tell their stories.

Conventional Narrative Structure
Conventional narratives follow the same basic pattern in terms of the way they construct a story.

The terms used by Todorov to define the three main parts of a narrative structure (the beginning, middle and end) are:
-Equilibrium - the balanced normawlity of the world of the story
-Disequilibrium - unbalanced world between the problem and the climax (see below)
-New Equilibrium - a return to normality at the end - returning the world to balanced state

The equilibrium and the new equilibrium are not exacly the same. The problems of the disequilibrium will have caused the world of the text to change in some way or the characters have learned lessons as the narrative developed.

This basic three point narrative can be looked at in more detail. This is sometimes called the narrative arc.