A narrative is a format that describes a sequence of fictional or non-fictional events through writing, speech, film, or other media. Narrative theorists have proposed various ways to analyze narratives, including Vladimir Propp's classification of character roles and functions, Tzvetan Todorov's theory of narratives moving from equilibrium to disruption and back again, and Roland Barthes' identification of five narrative codes. Todorov and Propp's theories are particularly applicable to analyzing the horror genre, as horror often involves disrupting normality and identifying common character archetypes like heroes and villains.

1. What is narrative?

2. What is narrative?
• A narrative is a constructive format as a work
of speech, writing, song, film, television, video
games, photography or theatre, that describes
a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events.
The word "story" may be used as a synonym
of "narrative". It can also be used to refer to
the sequence of events described in a
narrative .

3. Narrative theorists and theories.
Vladimir Propp – he proposed that it was possible to
classify the characters and their actions into clearly
defined roles and functions.
Todorov – suggests most narratives starts with
equilibrium which is where everything is normal and
protagonists are happy.
Roland Barthes – suggests that narrative works with
five different codes which activate the reader to
make sense of it.

4. What narrative theories link to the
horror genre?
Toderovs theory fits in well with the horror genre,
because it most horror films it typically starts with
everything being completely normal and then
something terrible happening and corrupting the
normality, and then in the end everything ends up ok
again.
Propps theory also links well to the horror genre as
he said you can identify the characters and their
actions into defined roles and functions. For
example, the hero and the villian etc.