The Narrative Structure is one of the elements that contribute to the story’s efficacy.
Together with the Storytelling Trance Experience, the Mirror Neurons and the Media through which story is told, it is essential for the Storytelling.
As explained in the relative article (here), Storytelling does not mean simply telling a story. It is more than that. It means communicating through stories or create reality representations.
To make this representation we can start understanding that a story is more than a simple chronological sequence of events and facts. Indeed, it is a simulation of the reality build upon the chronological events and fact with emotional, perceptive, symbolic and fictional elements.
This representation needs a framework to exist that is the Narrative Structure.
THE BASIC MODEL OF NARRATIVE STRUCTURE
We can compare the narrative structure to the skeleton of a story. It supports all the parts of the story, its events and characters, and it is what make sense of it.
Generally, we learn at school that the narrative text follows this scheme.
In the beginning, the characters, places and times of the story are introduced.
The debut introduces what alter the original balance and it can be a problem to solve, a challenge to face or an enemy to defeat.
In the development, all the adventures of the characters to solve the problem, to win the challenge or defeat the enemy, are narrated.
The end consists in the conclusion of the story, the problem has been solved, the challenge has been won or the enemy has been defeated. The original broken balance is restored.
This is the first model of narrative structure that we, as students, learn at school to make a narrative text.
However, it is also good to write other types of text like an essay. In an essay, we start introducing the subject, then we support our thesis with detailed information and in the conclusion we sum up all the things. Indeed, the typical essay structure is: introduction, body, conclusion.
So, in other words, this is a basic model that we can use for writing any text.
Different models for different purposes
Talking about stories and narrative text, during the years many different models has been studied and individuated. These are:
- The hero’s journey by Campbell-Vogler;
- Syd Field’s Paradigm;
- Dan Harmon Story Circle;
- Fichtean Curve;
- Save the Cat;
- Freytag’s Pyramid;
- The 7 point Story Structure
Each of these models, as we can read in the relative article, was born for specific needs and specific purpose. Some can be more suitable for novels and stories, others can be suitable for screenplays.
THE STRUCTURE IS IMPORTANT
Choosing among the different models of narrative structures is discretional. It depends on the author, on what he/she is writing, how he/she decides to write it and why he/she is writing it.
The fact is that Storytelling, as we have said previously, also means communicating. Communicating means sharing, broadcasting and sending contents, which need a certain order to be understood.
Moreover, if the story has no sense, it can’t engage the reader and activate the so called Storytelling Trance Experience.