1. Chapter 4-Elements of Narrative
A narrative film is a movie devoted to
conveying fictional or fictionalized stories,
usually organized in a traditional structure
including exposition, rising action, climax,
falling action and denoument
2. What’s a Screenwriter?
A screenwriter is responsible for creating a
movies story—called a screenplay—either
from scratch or adapting it from another
format such as short story, novel television
show or play.
3. Evolution of a Screenplay
• Treatment– outlines the action and structure
• Rough draft—exactly what it sounds like
• Storyboard—shot by shot breakdown
• Shooting script—includes details followed by
the actors and director
4. Elements of narrative
• Expostion –everything preceding and
including the inciting incident
• Rising action—the development of the action
towards a climax
• Climax—the narrative’s turning point
• Falling action—the events that follow the
climax and bring narrative from climax to
conclusion
• Denoument—the conclusion of the narrative
5. Story and Plot
• Story is all the narrative events that are
explicitly presented on the screen plus all the
implicit events we infer but never see.
• A plot is a structure for presenting efverything
we see and hear in a film: that is the diegetic
events and nondiegetic material
6. • Diegesis– made up of the total world of the
story e.g. objects, setting, characters, sound,
called diegetic elements
• Non diegetic elements are outside the world
of the story and include background music,
titles and credits or voice-over from an
omniscient narrator.
7. Durations
• Story duration is the time a story takes to
occur
• Plot duration – the time elapsed in the story
• Screen duration– the actual time on screen.
8. Characters
• Round characters are complex and three-
dimensional
• Flat characters are one-dimensional posessing
one or very few discernable traits and are
generally predictable.
• Major characters—make things happen
• Minor characters just help move the plot
along.
• Marginal characters come and go quickly.
9. Types of narration
• Omnicient—third-person view of all aspects of
the story
• Restricted—only knows what a specific
character knows
