The Art of Narratives
Stories have been an integral part of human evolution. Stories have served as a medium to pass down knowledge and ideas across generations over time. The entire lifetime of a person is filled with tremendous such stories, which influence the intellectual and behavioral aspects of a person. Be it the early days of storytelling around fireplace gatherings or the modern-day binge-watch of digital content on Netflix etc, humans no doubt have been inveterate producers and consumers of stories.
From stories to narratives
The idea of a story starts with two main elements: Character and Plot. A plot is a sequence of events occurring in the story which typically includes an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, and a conclusion. Then comes a third element: Conflict, which is the binding element between the plot and the character.
The idea of conflict influences the sequence of events taking place in the plot. This plot, in turn, sways the character, who chooses to act in a certain way, triggering another sequence of events which in turn affects the plot. Thus, in this way we have a relationship where the plot and the character start feeding each other and build up the story.
In a nutshell, we have a story that is an account of the journey of a character or a series of characters as they pursue something up against certain obstacles.
Let's take the plot, which essentially is the sequence of events in the story, start messing up with the chronology of the events and the relationship between them, what you will end up with is a Narrative. Thus essentially narrative becomes the way the story is chosen to be told by the author. What it also means is that there can be different narratives possible for the same story. Narrative is the one that provides a certain perspective of the story and, influences the way the recipient perceives the story. Narrative truly enhances a story.
Linear vs Non-Linear Narratives
The idea of chronological disruption branches out into two different forms of narratives namely
Linear Narrative, where the story starts at the beginning and progresses to reveal other events as they occur with time and space. It is as simple as the progression of events A to B, B to C, C to D, D to E, and so on 😌. Such type of narrative usually startup with an introduction, with conflicts and problems building up in the middle, and a resolution and conclusion towards the end.
Non-Linear Narratives, on the other hand, aren’t bound by space and time and have much more freedom in choosing a trajectory. They don’t necessarily have to start at the beginning and conclude at the end. They are famous for incorporating numerous flashbacks, flashbacks within flashbacks, memory sequences, and many others. They are famous for giving the recipients a mental rollercoaster throughout by jumping between various events that too in varying timelines! 😯
Human Mind and Non-Linear Narratives
The human mind is generally programmed to build up a cause-and-effect sequence, as the events progress in a story. Each beat of information must relate to what happened before and after. What non-linear narratives do is that they tend to disrupt this pattern and present the recipient with a jigsaw puzzle of events out of chronology. Just as a jigsaw puzzle has meaning when assembled and viewed as a whole, the same applies to various time segments in the non-linear narratives, which form a specific meaning when taken all together.
This makes them unconventional, but effective when the inference is finally deciphered. Freedom from tieing up the chronology opens up opportunities to build up more character depth making the story much closer to a real-life one and more relatable. In such narratives, Theme, i.e. the central idea acts as the binding element of the story and all the disrupted chronology ties up to the discovery of the theme, creating an AWWW moment!!. This is what can be referred to as mental rollercoaster🎢. This pattern can be found in many modern-day movies like Prestige, Pulp Fiction, Dunkirk, Interstellar and Memento where the idea of distorted timelines is at play.
Coming back to the original discussion about stories being an integral part of our lives, narratives are indeed the hidden treasure of a story, and figuring out the narrative and appreciating the “Art of Narratives” at play definitely will enhance the way we deliver and experience our stories.
