Narrative Theory

Tim O'Sullivan (1998) argues that all media texts tell some kind of story. Media texts offer a way of telling stories about ourselves. Narrative theory is how we read a story to understand it and its conventions.

Narrative - The structure of the story.
Diegesis - The fictional space and time implied by the narrative; the world in which the story takes place.
Verisimilitude - Literally; the quality of appearing to be real or true. For a story to feel real it must engage the audience.

According to Pam Cook (1985), the standard Hollywood narrative structure should have:

Linearity of cause and effect.
A high degree of narrative closure.
A fictional world that contains verisimilitude, especially governed by spatial and temporal coherence.

Tzvetan Todorov theory:

1.) A state of equilibrium.
2.) The stability is interrupted - disequilibrium.
3.) Recognition that a disruption has taken place.
4.) Action is taken against the disequilibrium.
5.) New state of equilibrium is created which is different from the initial state due to changes in the diegesis.

Kate Domaille (2001) believes that every story ever told can be fitted into one of eight narrative types. Each of these narrative types has a source.

1.) Achilles: The fatal flaw that leads to the destruction of the previously flawless, or almost flawless, person.
2.) Candide: The indomitable hero who cannot be put down.
3.) Cinderella: The dream comes true.
4.) Circe: The chase, the spider and the fly, the innocent and the victim.
5.) Faust: Selling your soul which brings riches but consequences.
6.) Orpheus: The loss of something personal and the tragedy of the loss or the journey which takes place.
7.) Romeo and Juliet: The love story.
8.) Tristan and Iseult: The love triangle.

Claude Levi-Strauss (1958) his ideas about narrative amount to the fact that he believed all stories operated to certain clear binary opposites (good and evil). The importance of these ideas is that essentially a complicated world is reduced to a simple structure.