This document provides an overview of various narrative theories and concepts, including: - Plot vs narrative and how audiences decode narrative - Time and location manipulation techniques - Propp's approach of 31 possible narrative stages and 7 character roles - Todorov's 5 stages of narrative equilibrium disruption and restoration - Levi-Strauss' concept of narratives being organized around binary opposites - Barthes' action and enigma codes It concludes by posing questions about applying these concepts to analyzing one's own work.

1. Learning Objectives:
• Learn a variety of theories on narrative.
• Understand how to answer question 1b on
narrative.
• Decide which of your productions you
would write about for a question on
narrative.

2. Noam Chomsky
“Narrative is fundamental to human
understanding.”

3. Plot vs Narrative
• The plot of a film is everything that
happens to the characters in chronological
order.
• The narrative of a film is the coherence or
organisation given to a sequence of
events.
• It is up to the audience to decode the
narrative and work out what the plot is.

4. For example, in Titanic…
• The plot begins when • The narrative shows
several characters one of the characters
board an ocean liner as an old woman who
then relays her story
of the ocean liner.

5. Storytime vs Screen Time
• The story time is the length of the entire story
whereas the screen time is the length of the film.
• Usually the story time is longer than the screen
time.
• Sometimes the story and screen times are the
same (eg 24 (arguably!))
• Can you think of a possible way that the screen
time could be longer than the story time?

6. Time Manipulation
• Summary (e.g time compression)
• Ellipsis (cutting out intervening time)
• Flashbacks
• Dream Sequences
• Repetition
• Different characters POV
• Flash Forwards

7. Location Manipulation
• Establishing shots
– New York skyline
• Creative Geography
– Separate shots of different locations –
audience assumes they must be related.
• Location conventions
– Often associated with genre and form –
spaceships.

8. Propp’s approach to narrative
• Vladimir Propp studied hundreds of Russian folk and
fairytales before deciding that all narratives have a
common structure.
• He observed that narratives are shaped and directed by
certain types of characters and specific kinds of actions
• He believed that there are 31 possible stages or
functions in any narrative
• These may not all appear in a single story, but
nevertheless always appear in the same sequence.
• A function is a plot motif or event in the story.
• A tale may skip functions but it cannot shuffle their
unvarying order.

9. Propp’s approach to narrative
Propp believed that there are seven roles which any character may
assume in the story:
• Villain − struggles with hero
• Donor − prepares and/or provides hero with magical agent
• Helper − assists, rescues, solves and/or transfigures the hero
• Princess − a sought-for person (and/or her father) who exists
as goal and often recognises and marries hero and/or
punishes villain
• Dispatcher − sends hero off
• Hero − departs on a search (seeker-hero), reacts to donor and
weds at end
• False Hero − claims to be the hero, often seeking and
reacting like a real hero

10. Todorov’s approach to narrative
There are five stages a narrative has to pass through:
• The state of equilibrium (state of normality – good, bad
or neutral).
• An event disrupts the equilibrium (a character or an
action).
• The main protagonist recognises that the equilibrium
has been disrupted.
• Protagonist attempts to rectify this in order to restore
equilibrium.
• Equilibrium is restored but, because causal
transformations have occurred, there are differences
(good, bad, or neutral) from original equilibrium, which
establish it as a new equilibrium.

11. The Structure Of The Classic Narrative
System
According to Pam Cook (1985), the standard
Hollywood narrative structure should have:
• Linearity of cause and effect within an
overall trajectory of enigma resolution.
• A high degree of narrative closure.
• A fictional world that contains
verisimilitude especially governed by
spatial and temporal coherence.

12. Claude Levi-Strauss’s approach to narrative
• After studying hundreds of myths and legends from
around the world, Levi-Strauss observed that we make
sense of the world, people and events by seeing and
using binary opposites everywhere.
• He observed that all narratives are organised around the
conflict between such binary opposites.

13. Examples of binary opposites
• Good vs evil • Protagonist vs antagonist
• Black vs white • Action vs inaction
• Boy vs girl
• Motivator vs observer
• Peace vs war
• • Empowered vs victim
Civilised vs savage
• Democracy vs dictatorship • Man vs woman
• Conqueror vs conquered • Good-looking vs ugly
• First world vs third world • Strong vs weak
• Domestic vs foreign/alien • Decisive vs indecisive
• Articulate vs inarticulate • East vs west
• Young vs old • Humanity vs technology
• Man vs nature • Ignorance vs wisdom

14. Roland Barthes Codes
• Action codes – symbolic/iconographic
images that communicate events from the
narrative, e.g. characters brushing hands
to retrieve spilled papers suggest that they
are falling in love
• Enigma codes – questions raised by a
narrative that the audience yearn to
answer

15. Narrative
• How useful is the concept of narrative in
understanding your work?
• What is the narrative structure of your work?
• How have narrative techniques been used to
appeal to the audience?
• How have you used characters in your work? Is
Propp useful to understanding your production?
• What other narrative conventions can you
consider? Does your work support or subvert
them?
• How does the narrative shape the meaning of your
production?

16. Sample Question
“Media texts rely on cultural
experiences in order for audiences to
easily make sense of narratives”.
Explain how you used conventional
and / or experimental narrative
approaches in one of your production
pieces.