We tell stories everyday. It is part of communicating with others through jokes, musings, personal thoughts or experiences . Therefore narrative is form of story-telling in a constructive format to organize the information and further describes a sequence of fictional or non-fictional events in a manner that leads the reader continuously to ask 'and then? (Hyvärinen, 2010). Narrative is composed of paradigmatic and syntagmatic features. The syntagmatic dimension of narrative focuses on linking events rationally and one element in a configuration can be replaced with another belonging to a similar category. On the other hand, the paradigmatic dimension is where a narrative takes characters and elements and removes from their temporal meaningfulness and gives them non-temporal sense. Both Todorov and Propp’s theories of structural analysis of narrative elements exemplify the syntagmatic dimension; while Lévi-Strauss’ theory of the “deep structure” in narratives is paradigmatic. However narration works differently in different media.
In a picture which usually deals with frozen moment of time, we often imagine what takes place before or about to happen in the image. Depending on the medium, the genre of the image can change. In order to convey the narrative visually, it utilized the relations between characters and signs. The color of the picture also indicate the time occurred in the story (Branston & Stafford, 2006). Black and white and color often signals whether the story in the photo is past or present.
Like almost everybody, I have passion for photography and my favourite subjects are kids, particularly my children. They grow up in the blink of an eye. Through photography I can capture as many precious moments as they grow up. Below are some of my favourite photos of my children having fun on the Seria beach during the Chinese Dumpling Festival.
The photos above tell a story. The characters are my children and they were at the beach as the sun almost sets. The look on their faces exhibits positive emotions such as happiness, joy and contentment. Their actions playing and splashing in the waters and getting wet and wild while still with their clothes on display fun, excitement and freedom to do as they want.
For film, time is the ultimate challenge as the story has to conveyed in the average length of two hours. The time is displayed through caption such as a year before, two weeks before and the scene follows after that. Flashbacks are also used to shuffle time in a narrative to add further information to the plot. The opening of the film establishes time, place, location and the characters in the narrative. It lures the audience into the narrative. Meanwhile the closing ended the story with resolving of a conflict, tying up loose ends and suspect to allow the audience to leave the narration. The setting where the narrative takes place is also equally important as it affects how we interpret the story. Other narrative aspects include the genre, characters, mis en scene, audience, sound and special effects among others.
Meanwhile verbal or spoken narratives involve a person describing things and events and tell the stories in sequence. There is absence of visual and it relies completely on words in the construction of the story. Typically, we will speak about the subject of the story, the settings and describe the time sequence through transition words such as today, before, afterwards, then or later. The storyteller will stick to the topic with beginning and ending and also addresses the questions of who, what, where, when,why and how.
Lastly, narrative writing is writing that tells a story and the most popular form or written narrative are books. Books can be stories, poems, fables or even non-fictional. A story always conveys a theme and all the conventions of storytelling such as plot, character, setting, climax, and ending. It is filled with details that are chosen to explain, support or embellish the story. The writing should also portrays the writer's voice, and tells it in a one person point of view or being told by an outside observer (narrator). There is also opening paragraph to orientate the readers and give them idea from the start to see if it is worth reading. The beginning of the story must also be lively enough to cat the attention of the readers. A good plot also have situations which happen throughout the narrative that makes you want to read on. It usually have crisis, which is a turning point or danger or suspense and characterization to describe the person's actions or appearance. Setting is also strong influence on how the reader feels.The words must be vivid and lively to involve the reader. All the details relate in some way to the main point the writer is making.
References :
Goodson, I. (2010). Narrative learning. Taylor & Francis Group : New York.
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