Story structure
Story structure or narrative structure is the recognizable or comprehensible way in which a narrative's different elements are unified, including in a particularly chosen order and often specifically referring to the ordering of the plot: the narrative series of events. In a play or work of theatre especially, this can be called dramatic structure, which is presented in audiovisual form. The following overviews how story structure works in a cross-cultural and general sense.
"Dramatic Structure" redirects here. For the 1973 book by Jackson G. Barry, see Dramatic Structure: The Shaping of Experience.Definition[edit]
Story is a sequence of events, which can be true or fictitious, that appear in prose, verse or script, designed to amuse or inform an audience.[1] Story structure is a way to organize the story's elements into a recognizable sequence. It has been shown to influence how the brain organizes information.[2] Story structures can vary culture to culture and throughout history. The same named story structure may also change over time as the culture also changes.
First described in ancient times by Greek philosophers (such as Aristotle and Plato), the notion of narrative structure saw renewed popularity as a critical concept in the mid-to-late-20th century, when structuralist literary theorists including Roland Barthes, Vladimir Propp, Joseph Campbell, and Northrop Frye attempted to argue that all human narratives have certain universal, deep structural elements in common. This argument fell out of fashion when advocates of poststructuralism such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida asserted that such universally shared, deep structures were logically impossible.[7]
In Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism, he deals extensively with what he calls myths of spring, summer, fall, and winter:[8]
In Frye's Great Code, he offers two narrative structures for plots:[9]
Graphic narrative[edit]
A simple graphic narrative, such as in comics, has four stages: an introduction of the characters and a description of a situation; the introduction of a problem, unexpected opportunity, or other complication into the situation; a resolution in the form of a partial or complete response to the problem by one or more of the characters; and the denouement, the aftermath of the response that makes clear the success, partial success, non-success, or uncertain success of the response. This fourth stage may also show how the original situation has changed due to what has taken place in the Complication and Resolution stages of the narrative.[12]
In a simple narrative, the four stages appear in order. That is, the sequence of the telling or presentation follows the chronology of the told. In a more complex story, the order of the telling may vary. For instance, such a story may begin with the Denouement and then present the Situation, Complication, and Resolution in a flashback. But this is not the case with a simple narrative.[13]