Understanding Narrative: Elements, Techniques, and Structure
The Narrative
The narrative is to have facts, real or imagined, that happen to characters in a time and in a specific space. They are told by a narrator in a particular chronological order and from a specific perspective.
Elements of the Narrative
Action
These are the elements that are succeeding and which give rise to history. They must present a logical motive and subsequent processing. The narrative texts tend to have a primary action and other secondary ones.
The Characters
They are responsible for carrying out the facts narrated. They can be key in turning around the narrative, or secondary, whose function is to complete it. The characterization may occur early in the narrative only once or go to show in the story.
According to the precision of the characteristics, the characters are classified as type characters, responding to some very generic features, or individual characters, which are the specific traits they possess well defined. According to its evolution, personages are distinguished as plans, which do not change throughout the story, and rounded characters, who possess a variety of features that change over the text.
The Time and Space
The narrative time is the time and duration of the action of the story. You can take a life, a time, etc.
The narrative space is the place where the characters develop actions. It can be fictional or real.
Narrative Techniques in Literary Narratives
The Narrator and Narrative Perspective
The narrator, who tells the facts, is an issuer that is part of imaginary fiction. They have different views.
- When participating in events, it is because it is a character, a first-person narrator. If the story’s main character, it is called a narrator protagonist. If the character is secondary, the narrator is a witness. If the narrator is limited to transcribing what someone else has created, it is a storyteller transcriber.
- When the narrator tells what has happened to another, it is a third-person narrator. If the narrator knows only what he sees or hears, but does not know the characters, the narrator is an observer. If you know all about the characters, their privacy and thoughts, it is called an omniscient narrator.
- Sometimes the narrator tells what happened in the second person. He addresses himself, splitting his personality.
Order of Events
- Progressive and linear structure: Chronological order of events. It is usually: a beginning, middle, and ending of events.
- Structure in medias res: We present the knot first, then go back to the events giving rise to the situation.
- Structure in extreme res: The story begins with the end state, then returns to the baseline.
- Structure fragmented and dispersed: The reader must reconstruct the chronological order.
Linguistic Procedures
The most common linguistic features are:
- The emergence of verbal forms that have events. The time likely to dominate is the present perfect simple.
- Sentences are often predictive in nature.
- Adverbial subordinate clauses are used.
- Many resources are used, such as anaphoric and deictic cataphoric.
- Use of literary figures.