The Narrative plot Or narrative nucleus is that used, worth the redundancy, in the narrative texts. That is, narrative texts are those that tell a story and the narrative plot is the story and the development of it.
An example to understand exactly what the narrative plot is, was given by the novelist E.M Forster in his book Aspects of the novel In the year 1927: "The king and the queen died is a story. The king and the queen died of pain is the plot."
The narrative plot is based on the development of history and all the elements that converge in it. These types of frames must be characterized by giving the reader a sense of cause and effect.
The narrative is, most of the time, as a category of fiction; As is the case of novels and stories.
But you can tell a story with real characters, like the style of biographies and auto-biographies. That is why any narrative text can and should have plot.
Elements of the narrative plot
The basic and necessary element of a narrative frame is a defined structure, sequence of events to be able to be written.
It must possess the quality of having a cause, a consequence and a resolution of that consequence.
"Harry Potter"is an example of a well-structured narrative plot. All books follow the same main narrative plot and each book has a secondary plot.
Harry Potter was the only person who survived an attack of the antagonist (Cause), the antagonist pursues him to be able to end it (Consequence and Problem), Harry Potter defeats the antagonist (Problem Solving)
A narrative plot must flee from two extremes, the excess of details and the lack of details. The narrative plot does not seek to count event by event, it seeks to connect them. Things do not go wrong. The basis of the plot is that this happens because this happened and because something happened, you have to solve it.
Examples:
Lack of details
The boy walked, stumbled, fell, was taken to the hospital.
Excessive detail
The boy walked down the narrow, long street that was right in front of his house. As he was walking where he always did, he found a very wide and tall rock, large, gray with holes in one side and made him stumble.
He fell, fractured a bone and had to take him to the white hospital of 5 floors that has 6 elevators, which is next to the square...
Focusing on each event without giving it the right connection causes doubts and voids. In the first example, we can not find the cause or the connection of facts. Why did he stumble? What happened to the fall? Why were they taken to the hospital?
On the contrary, focusing on every detail causes the base of the plot to be lost. In the second example, all the details of the environment are revealed and with so much information, the plot of the narrative is lost: A boy walking, tripped with a rock (cause), fractured a bone (problem), and took him to Hospital (solution)
The plot must be developed in a natural way.
Structure
A good narrative plot, must follow a structure so that it can be understood.
The beginning should give the introduction to the story. Here the context and environment are presented in whole or in part. It should present the main character, the subject or the subjects who will lead the plot and should be given the development of the story.
In this part of the plot, you must show the reason why the character must do what he has to do. For example, a thought, a problem or a situation
The development of the plot is the middle part of the story, after knowing characters, environment and situations is passed to the interaction of the characters with such situations.
At this stage, the narrative plot should focus on how the characters deal with the problem and how the situation is handled to resolve it.
In fact, the development of history is at the heart of the narrative plot. This is where most events happen and the chronological aspect is treated, that is, the order of each situation.
The end of the story is the segment of the plot in which problems must be solved, for good or for bad since not all narratives have"happy"endings.
In this part, the characters must get to the bottom of the subject, know why things happened and close the plot.
Example:
If you take the book as an example "The Hunger Games" , The structure of the narrative plot is evidenced.
The beginning shows who is Katniss (the protagonist), where she comes from, who she knows and where she is. It shows the beginning of the development of history, in this case, a situation: The choice of taxes for games.
The development of the plot focuses on the interaction of Katniss in games. How you deal with them and how you deal with them.
The end shows the result of the completion of The Games, after having seen the interaction of the characters with the situation.
Why should you use the structure of the narrative plot?
If a plot has a bad start, it will not be possible to know what originated the action of the story. Which will provoke a vacuum in the questions: Who? and because?
If a plot has a bad development, it is understood why it started everything but does not delve into the plot itself.
You can not appreciate the evolution of the characters and the question is not answered: How? Poor development will result in an ill-told story.
If a plot has a bad ending, the reader will be in the air to understand what happened. You will be shown how you started and how you approached the subject, but you will not know how you solved it and leave an unfinished and unintelligible end.
References
- Nordquist, R (2016) (Narratives). Excerpted from thoughtco.com.
- Cassano, A. What is Plot. Examples & Definition. Excerpted from study.com.
- Janovsky, A. What is narrative writing? Definitions, types, characteristics and examples. Excerpted from study.com.
- Freitag D, Melton R, and Stautz, S. Elements of Narrative. A structural approach to writing narrative. Extracted from mollyjscanlon.com.
- Scanlan, C (2003) What is Narrative, Anyway? Excerpted from poynter.org.
- (2015) What is narrative writing? Excerpted from empoweringwriters.com.