A narrative refers to a report of events that are connected, imaginary or real, that is presented in a spoken or written sequence, or by still or moving images, or both. Narrative is derived from the Latin verb “narrare”, which means “to tell”, which comes from the adjective gnarus that means skilled or knowing.
The organization of narratives can be done in a number of formal and thematic categories. These categories include:
Narrative can be found in every form of human creativity, entertainment and art, including literature, music, speech, film, video, theatre, comics, photography, drawing, painting, visual arts and many more. The only requirement is that an events’ sequence is presented. A few art movements like modern art refuse the narrative, favoring the conceptual and abstract.
The earliest method of sharing narratives is the oral storytelling. During the childhood of most people, narratives are used for purposes of guiding them on cultural history, proper behavior, values and the formation of a communal identity. This is currently studied under anthropology among the traditional indigenous peoples.
Narratives can also be carried within other narratives. This includes those narratives that are told by a narrator that is unreliable (a character) typically found in noir fiction genre. One of the major parts of narration is what is referred to as the narrative mode, method set that is used for communication of the narrative via a process narration.
Apart from argumentation, description and exposition, narration, broadly defined, is among the four rhetorical discourse modes. It can be said to be the fiction-writing mode whereby the narrator communicates directly to the reader.
TYPES OF NARRATORS.
The manner in which a work of fiction is taken by the reader is dependent on the writer’s choice in the narrator. There is a difference between first-person and third-person narrative, which is referred to as the intradiegetic and extradiegetic narrative in the respective manner. Intradiegetic narrators are grouped into two types: a homodiegetic narrator takes part as a character in the story. That narrator cannot know much about other characters other than what is revealed by their actions. A heterodiegetic narrator on the other side, describes the characters’ experiences appearing in the story that he or she does not take part in.
A majority of the narrators present their stories from either of the following perspectives (which are referred to as narrative modes): limited or omniscient first person, or third person. In general, a first person narrator brings about a greater focus on the opinions, perceptions and feelings of a certain character in a story, and on the manner in which the character perceives the world. The third person limited narrator can be an alternative that doesn’t require the writer to disclose all that is known to the first character. A third-person omniscient narrator provides a panoramic view of the story’s world, looking into a large number of characters and into the broader story’s background.
