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Narrative. What’s A Narrative?. A NARRATIVE is a story, told in many ways: a short story, a book, spoken word, a movie, even a video game. A narrative is based around a basic structure composed of several stages.
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What’s A Narrative? • A NARRATIVE is a story, told in many ways: a short story, a book, spoken word, a movie, even a video game. • A narrative is based around a basic structure composed of several stages. • The basic narrative structure can also be thought of as a PLOT MOUNTAIN — but we’ll get to that in just a bit!
The Parts Of A Narrative: Setting • The most important part of telling a story is to establish the SETTING, also known as the ordinary world, where the story takes place. • A setting is where the story takes place, not just physically, but in time — season? year? century? • What’s daily life like there/then? How does that impact the characters?
The Parts Of A Narrative: Conflict • A story isn’t a story without a CONFLICT, something to push the action forward and draw the main character out of their boring, ordinary world. • A conflict is a problem to be solved, caused either by a person or a set of circumstances. • The conflict will build over the course of the story, until it is resolved at the end. • What are some examples in books or movies that you’ve seen/read?
The Parts Of A Narrative:Rising Actions/Complications • A conflict doesn’t get solved right away — there are often COMPLICATIONS that start causing the action to rise. • What gets in the way of the hero automatically solving the conflict? • In A Wrinkle In Time, Charles Wallace being taken over by IT could be seen as a complication, or part of the rising action.
The Start of a Plot Mountain • Putting in the elements we have so far, we can start to chart the course of the action of the story so it looks like a mountain. RISING ACTION Setting Conflict Complication Complication
The Parts Of A Narrative:Climax • Eventually, the rising action builds to the highest point, the most exciting part of the story: THE CLIMAX. • This is often a final battle in an action story, or a man declaring his love during a rainstorm in a romance story, or, like in Star Wars, when they escape the Death Star with Princess Leia.
The Parts Of A Narrative:Falling Action/Resolution • After the climax, the story starts to wind up — this is the FALLING ACTION. • The conflict is RESOLVED, and there is a point of resolution. Everyone lives happily ever after! • In The Hunger Games, Katniss and Peeta have won by beating the system, and go back to District 12. • In The Avengers, Loki is captured, and all the Avengers go back to working on their own.
The Other Side of the Plot Mountain • Putting in the new elements, we can see the decline of the plot mountain. Climax RISING ACTION FALLING ACTION Setting Conflict Resolution Complications