A narrative is some kind of retelling, often in words (though it is possible to mime a story), of something that happened (a story). The narrative is not the story itself but rather the telling of the story -- which is why it is so often used in phrases such as "written narrative," "oral narrative," etc. While a story just is a sequence of events, a narrative recounts those events, perhaps leaving some occurrences out because they are from some perspective insignificant, and perhaps emphasizing others. In a series of events, a car crash takes a split second. A narrative account, however, might be almost entirely about the crash itself and the few seconds leading up to it. Narratives thus shape history.

What is “Narration” ? : The Term “Narration” is Noun. It Denotes : 1. An act of giving a spoken or written account of something, for example, a story, an event, a whole sequence of events, a film, a broadcast, a piece of music, a travel by plane, train, bus, sailing by a boat or ship, a scientific discovery, an innovation in modern technology, an episode, a space travel, etc. 2. The narrated part of a literary work, as distinct from dialogue. 3. The practice or art of telling stories. 4. In the form of or concerned with narration. In terms of Grammar, “Narration” refers to ‘Direct Speech' and ‘Indirect Speech'. ‘Direct Speech' purports to give the exact words that someone utters or has uttered in speech or writing. ‘Indirect Speech', on the other hand, conveys a report of what has been said or written, but does so in the words of a subsequent reporter. We can consider the following sentences, which make a contrast between the Direct Speech (as in the 1st Sentence) and the Indirect Speech (as with two possible versions in Indirect Speech , in the 2nd Sentence and the 3rd Sentence respectively) : 1. Dr. Om Prakash said to me after the Meeting of the University's Academic Council, “In my opinion, the arguments in favour of complete changes in the Curriculum are not convincing.” 2. Dr. Om Prakash said to me after the Meeting of the University's Academic Council that in his opinion the arguments in favour of complete changes in the Curriculum were not convincing. 3. Dr. Om Prakash told me after the Meeting of the University's Academic Council that he remained opposed to any complete changes in the Curriculum.

It means a third voice (usually not seen) gives the perspective from the present while events from the past are being presented to the viewer, like in a movie.

Basically, it’s a person who gives commentary to a novel, movie, music piece, poem, or some other kind of story. The narration brings clarity to a movie to help the viewer understand the perspective of the character shown and what is learned. Narration is common in both fiction and non-fiction works.

In the visual form, either fiction or non-fiction, the narrator is never seen while talking from the present or narrating, but this is not always the case.

Many TV shows of the 50s and 60s had live narration before the show to give a synopsis of the episode.

For example, Walt Disney usually appeared on the long running Walt Disney show The Wonderful World of Disney giving a synopsis, Ronald Reagan narrated as himself on Wagon Train doing the same and in the television science fiction anthology series The Twilight Zone, Rod Sterling appeared narrating before each episode to give a brief synopsis of each episode, and again to give commentary at the end of the episode. The Waltons television drama of the 1970s always began with narration by John Boy, now an adult reflecting on past events in his life, though his adult self was never seen.

Dragnet always began with this very well known admonition and narrative voice over statement: the story you are about to see is true, the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Today, this type of narration is rare on television shows.

Let’s start by posing a simple question. What does the word ‘narrative’ mean to you? I pose this question not just academically. It’s a fundamental question that a writer needs to be able to answer and fully understand. Many writers, even advanced ones don’t necessarily know the functional answer.

To be of most benefit to writers beginning and not, we should begin with what narrative is not.

NARRATIVE IS NOT

• Description
• History / Facts / Research
• Opinions / Ideas / Prejudice

It seems overkill to put it up in lights like that, right? Certainly, once you lay those terms down it’s pretty obvious that those things are not narrative. If it’s so obvious, why is the most common beginner writing mistake to start with some long description about a place, or to detail some history about the story to come? Focus on that for a moment. The most common mistake is to start a story with material that isn’t narrative. Does that make sense? It shouldn’t. Yet, inexplicably it happens. Largely it’s because schools don’t teach creative writing. More, many teachers who have only written academically don’t understand fiction. Being able to write topic sentences and wiz-bang thesis statements does not a fiction writer make!

Now that we’ve introduced the problem, and explored the wrong answers. Let’s delve into the right answer. We’ll highlight it to drive it home:

Narrative IS:

• Events
• Viewpoint
• Temporal structure

At this point, some readers are going to be thinking that isn’t how they would define narrative— they were probably thinking something simpler. We’ll get to that. The simple answer is too simple. To write successful fiction it requires a little more insight.

From the top, narrative contains events. This is another thing that may seem obvious. When we talk about events, we mean something happening. Not something random like a bear farting in the forest. An event that is tied to a sequence that culminates in a change (or a failure to change). These happenings relate to a character or characters and should have some manifest effect on their needs and desires (goals). When we talk about events, they don’t have to be bombs going off. They just need to have weight and mean something. The essence of this is captured in the simple statement “The kingdom was lost for want of a nail”. The missing nail is a trivial thing, but in the instance of the tale it has far-reaching consequence. So, to restate, a narrative contains events of significance that are tied to the destinies of the protagonists and the arc of their change.

After events, viewpoint is the center of narrative. By viewpoint, we mean character. The significant events are being related by or affect people in the frame of the narrative. That’s not to say that viewpoint can’t be the omniscient author/narrator, it can be. However, a reader is better engaged when the events are related as they are experienced by a character. This allows the reader to vicariously share the the protagonist’s senses and emotions. This is a critical element of suspension of disbelief, and is therefore the cornerstone of a strong involving narrative.

Last in our list is temporal structure. This is a more abstract concept but it is the foundation upon which the other two aspects sit. The narrative has to start someplace, and it has to end. That’s the narrative scope. From ancient times, when narratives were only about where food and shelter could be obtained, a narrative was only comprised of sequential time structure, beginning to end, events related as they happened. However, with the advent of more advanced narration techniques, the story could start with the end, then depict the events that led to that conclusion. (I personally have never liked those kinds of narratives, but it is seen frequently.) As you might have surmised, the temporal structure can contain flashbacks of course. It can also be how the narrative is told. Most structures are past tense, however, present tense is an option as well. All the details aside, time and how it is managed is a critical aspect of narrative. Whole novels can be framed around a few minutes of time or a single event.

We’ve burned up a bunch of words building a very specific model of narrative. So, what about the prevailing understanding of the definition? Many people believe (and will defend the position) that narrative is the same thing as story. They are not the same. At its foundation a narrative is simply the elements described above. Essentially, a narrative is just history, memories replayed for their informative value. As I stated earlier, the first narratives were simply where our ancient predecessors found food and shelter. The topic and structure were simple. It was retold by the hunter who experienced it (through verbal ques, gestures, and pictures scratched in the dirt), the events described in order with some sort of reference to how long ago they happened.

Where narratives were about subsistence, stories had a far different function; to entertain. When we speak of entertaining, we touch back to my specific redefinition of narrative: significant events told through a character in a fixed scope of time. When we focus on entertainment or enjoyment, the writer should consider the oral story-telling tradition. People sitting around a fire listening to events being retold for their emotional impact (excitement, humor, etc.). If you are verbally telling such a story, you have a limited amount of time to tell it—so therefore you omit anything that’s not significant or important to getting the desired effect.

If stories are entertaining narratives, how do we define “entertaining”? In general, we can interpret this to mean something pleasurable or interesting. Refer to the call-out below:

Entertaining stories are:

• About people
• Engaged by obstacles and/or adversity
• Featuring interesting / intriguing settings, concepts, or personalities
• Ultimately concluding in a way that satisfies the audience

This definition might seem confining and it is. You could say if your narrative fits the model, then your narrative is “safe” in terms of whether or not it meets the criteria of being a story. There are many examples of published works that do not meet all of the above criteria. I know this because I was forced to read them. However, I would challenge how “entertaining” these works were. Intellectual peculiarities, perhaps, but definitely not fun to read. Literature classes have forever made me suspicious whenever the word “classic” was tacked onto the front of something. It was usually attributed to something challenging like James Joyce’s Ulysses or Finnegans Wake.

In the interests of completeness let’s caveat the entertaining story definition:

Entertainment and the Exceptions:

• Subjective but agreeable.
• Opinions often diverge on what “entertains”.
• It’s easy to agree on what doesn’t entertain.
• Don’t abandon the model simply because existing published works don’t fit.
• Being published and being entertaining and/or successful are not the same!

The intent here is not confine your thinking. The intent is to help you integrate the very important concept of entertainment into your understanding of writing and publishing. If you don’t care if it’s published (or feel you live under a lucky star), by all means fly in the face of this advice. If you live in the same realm with me and want others to read your story focus on the critical pillars of entertaining narrative outlined here. Focus on the people of your story, on the events that affect their needs and desires, and ultimately concluding in an epiphany that will satisfy the reader. Stick to that and someone somewhere will enjoy it.

Take Prince of Tides as an example. The main character is emotionally numb, but to save his suicidal sister, he needs to speak to her therapist about how they were raised.

Working with the therapist and learning to deal with his situation in life, he regains the ability to feel and saves his marriage.

His emotion narrative is to go from being numb to able to feel again.

You also see the same arc in The Accidental Tourist, about a man who writes a guide book about how travelers can create a cocoon for themselves in other countries. But this man lost his son in a senseless shooting and his wife leaves him.

His self-created cocoon has ruptured.

Because he is unable to feel, his dog takes on his feelings and goes crazy, so he needs to have the dog trained by a dog groomer who is just barely above trailer park trash, with a very ill son. Exactly what he doesn’t want in his life.

Except when he’s around her, he slowly gains the ability to feel.

His only slightly less numb, attractive wife then wants him back, but he decides to go with the woman and family that makes him feel alive.

That’s his emotional narrative.

The emotional narrative of a main character in a story is often what allows an audience to experience and share that character’s journey.

One of the more common failings in badly written novels is an emotionally numb main character who is numb through to the last page, last paragraph of the novel, when they exclaim, “I can feel now.” The end

The purpose of that kind of novel is to allow the author to experience that emotional narrative via harvesting the feelings of the numb main character via the situations the author creates. The numb main character is generally dragged through the novel by minor characters who are aflame with jealously, greed, discontent, and an undying need to make someone pay for their situations.

Other problems are a main character who mirrors the author’s deep wound in life, leaving that fictional character unable to act, but the author gets to pet their wound.

I go through a number of these difficult characters choices in my writing workbook, A Story is a Promise.

Some writers end up rearranging the events of a novel without understanding the underlying flaw in the main character being too passive (stuck main character dragged through novel by minor characters).

Another subtle problem with numb/stuck main characters is the writing tends to be a description of static action. Sentences become a collection of statements of facts that lack a narrative arc. For example, ‘My would is geography’ conveys an emotional context that ‘My name is Tom Wingo’ does not.

Bill Johnson, A Story is a Promise

Humans seek meaning from our existence. That is one of the repercussions of our large brain with its cerebral cortex devoted to symbolic interpretations of direct experience. Narrative -- the sequential connection of selected events across time -- enables meaning-making.

We tell stories, in conversation, in popular music, in television shows, in movies, in books, in news accounts, in emails, blog posts, texts -- in virtually every form of human communication. Selecting from our perceptions and our memories of them (same thing, really), enables us to link our experience with meaning for our own self and a sense of shared meaning with others. (This is why being misunderstood is so frustrating... It is more than a mere technical problem. Our meaning is thwarted.)

Even self-talk, the voice in our heads, is often in the form of a story: Many times we make up a story about what might happen to us. Good outcomes we call hope. Bad outcomes we call worry.

We are all born story-tellers. Some more gifted than others. But we all share stories with others. And we all love to hear them.

It's how we make sense of our lives. To narrate is to be human. And vice versa.

At least that's one way of telling the story...

Experience is interpreted. It is never unfiltered. If someone says that someone else was “fed a narrative”, they are claiming first and formost that the person’s understanding came from someone else who has “fed” their point of view to them. Second they are claiming that the information is either false or at least biased in a way that the accuser doesn’t like.

It is always a criticism. You don’t tell someone they were “fed a narrative” when you agree with their understanding of the event.

Discussions that involve someone accusing someone else of being fed a narrative are always about an actual event that could be interpreted in a different way. You would not say someone who read Harry Potter was fed a narrative.

Understand that there is no perception that is not a narrative. They human mind creates narratives or stories. If someone says, “What did you do yesterday?” Whatever comes out of your mouth next is a narrative. It is your perception of what you did yesterday. You might say, “Nothing” which you both know isn’t literally true but it is your story of what happened yesterday.

A fractal can be found when we look carefully at what goes into narratives of interaction. Its elements appear in a spirit-mind-body or "Heart-Head-Hands" pattern:

1. Feeling

Our hearts feel –

• Attractions from a source of resonance
  
• Aversions from threats to settled understandings/relationships

2. Imagining

In response to such feelings, our heads imagine –

• Opportunities – visions of a phase change to resolve the felt tensions
• Strategies – paths with action steps to realize the vision

3. Doing

Our hands/bodies then are moved to act via –

• Tests to confirm the main strategy
• Implementation of this strategy (or if the test fails, the strategy can be changed by re-looping through the above steps).
  

As far as I can tell, this pattern can be used to tag activities of sentient beings in their social and physical realms, regardless of the type or scale of the endeavors.

The proposed narrative fractal tags in the table above can be used in:

• analyzing the flow of conversations
• categorizing the structure of conversations and events that form subplots
• seeing the pattern that organizes subplots to make up a story
• mapping the convergence of stories that comprise an epic, and
• sensing how a combination of epics can be organized into an overarching belief system or a religion.

In scientific engagement with our environment, the narrative fractal can be described as:

• attractor
• challenge
• hypothesized outcome (in case:rule:result form)
• experimental design
• trials
• conclusion

In science, the assembly of small hypotheses and experiments on these lines similarly can scale to grand theories and to revolutions in scientific paradigms.

Genes, memes, and lumenes

Narrative fractals can be seen as a vector for three fundamental kinds of replicators in evolution.

Sociobiology and evolutionary psychology have postulated that the emergence of sentient life is the result of interactions between “selfish” genes (replicators of physical forms) and memes (replicators of ideas).

Yet there may be a third replicator interacting in a co-evolutionary dance with genes and memes.

I have called these lumenes, or replicable patterns of feeling. Feelings such as attraction, aversion, and indifference – in their various intensities and gradations – are also contending for reproductive success.

Sentient beings probe opportunities for all three types of replicators to survive and reproduce.

Narrative fractals in the feeling-imagining-doing pattern I have suggested make it possible for lifeforms to pass on generative scripts that balance the replicative pull of Mind (via memes), Body (via genes), and Feeling or Spirit (via lumenes).

The evolution of consciousness through increasingly complex narrative fractals

A scale-free pattern of processing of experience may have been at work from the start of life's evolutionary spiral.

Collections of molecules that proved able to sense and care about themselves – including an ability to apply a fractal pattern for adaptive responses to changes in their surroundings – would have gained a net survival and reproductive advantage over other assemblages lacking such a capacity.

This fractal pattern could have enabled organelles to form rudimentary cells, cells to combine as multicellular organisms, and multicellular organisms to evolve into complex beings.

Consciousness of others, as well as the self, also may have arisen more readily in entities wired to process interactions on the basis of a fractal pattern of experience.

A relatively small mutation might have led to emergence of such consciousness. Consciousness of others could have begun when an entity became able to apply its narrative fractal system not only for processing its own experience, but for modeling the activity of others encountered in the environment.

A narrative fractal pattern similarly could have assisted entities in forming more complex assemblies. A common basis for interacting with the environment would make communication and cooperation among participants more likely to emerge.

As more complex lifeforms experience attractions and aversions when encountering new situations, the narrative fractal pattern can lead to creation of an adaptive response. After feeling the tension, sentient beings can can cognitively imagine new opportunities and strategies. This can lead to physically testing and acting upon new action scripts that help the living entity survive and spread its generative scripts – valued combinations of memes, genes, and/or lumenes. (Innovative scripts may be the result of "exaptive" recombination of the replicators (http://chemoton.wordpress.com/2009/06/21/exaptive-english-words-i-am-in-love-with-1/ ).

In whatever paths this evolution may have followed to date, my hunch is that intelligent participants – human, artificial, or hybrid – will continue to use deep fractal-like narrative patterns in their environment, and to form trusted assemblies to deal with the attractors and challenges in more resilient and adaptive ways.

If the universe is wired in a benevolent way, consilient memes and lumenes propagated through the interactions of these intelligent forms will lead to non-zero sum outcomes for all of our descendents.

Next steps?

These ideas are in very early stages - look forward to conversations that can help them evolve and thrive!

In the future, I would like to create editable Narrative Fractal containers using Livecode's authoring platform, or a wiki-like platform developed by SocialCompare.com, or the card-based system offered by http://Wagn.com, which supports nestable objects. The aim will be to make it easier for online groups to swarm and co-create content on any topic in response to patterned prompts of this kind:

Heart (feeling)
- What attractor do you feel drawn to?
- What challenges/tensions come with it?

Head (imagining)
- What new condition could overcome these tensions?
- What strategy can work to get there?

Hands (doing)
- What test can confirm this strategy?
- What are you ready to do, if your test succeeds?

An early project for such a system, I hope, will be reorganize and enrich the contents of my Quora response here to make the ideas on narrative fractals more "alive and whole." Let me know if you may have an interest in participating.

As an exercise, to try to contribute to the refinement of the subject, and to provide contrast, I'll try to make up my own answer from scratch.

Narrative fractals are the simple patterns found in any kind of story or sub-story. They can be sequenced in any number of ways. They can be found at any level of the story. Their expression and meaning turns out different when used at different points, at different levels, or in different contexts.

They are recognized at many levels. They make sense, they are felt emotionally and kinesthetically, there is a higher order to them, and they are expressed in the finer details.

Together, they make stories be experienced like stories. A coherence is formed and easily recognized by the experiencer.

Here are some examples:

* Dispersal & Concentration: It can be expressed with many different words. Divergence/Convergence. Distraction/Focus. It is two different patterns which are opposite of each other. In one, parts or actors are spread out in all directions, moving further away from each other and from the starting point, getting more divergent. In the other, the elements are moved into one place, or into a smaller place, getting closer to each other, more uniform.

One might imagine a wealth of stories and of patterns for different types of activities developed from just that. The agents in the story might be dispersed by some initial explosive event and sent on their respective adventures. Along the way they experience dispersals and convergences of various kinds, adding to their experience. Towards the end they'll all come together, the sub-plots all tie together and there's a coherent end for everybody. That's also, for example, how an Open Space conference typically develops.

* Attraction & Repulsion: Again, that's two different, opposite, patterns. There's something that attracts. The attractor might be a person or an idea or a place, or all sorts of other things. What is attracted might also be people, ideas, etc. Repulsion goes the other direction. Lots of stories are based on attraction and repulsion, which maybe shifts along the way. Maybe this pattern could be said to be exactly the same as the first one I mentioned, as Attraction will create a Convergence towards the point of attraction, and Repulsion creates a Divergence. So, they might possibly just be fractals of the same pattern. Except for that they kind of are guided from opposite directions. Attraction is a pull by something, which normally is known in advance. Whereas in a Concentration/Convergence the target is rather being constructed or found along the way. In Repulsion, there's something definite there that is repulsing, where as in Divergence, it rather seems like there's an external pull from many directions.

A story will often have some kind of obvious target, maybe the intent of one of the players. That intent would essentially be an attractor, but only for some of the people involved, maybe only for one person. That's maybe more linear? Does it need its own pattern? I don't know. Maybe at least:

* Flow. Inertia. Movement that continues in the direction it was going, and/or along the path of least resistance, like water. Until there's a…

* Challenge. Conflict. Barrier. There's something in the way, something one can't do, or something that blocks what was planned. Which might force some kind of…

* Transformation. Evolution. Change of levels, change of forms. Moving to a meta level, finding a new solution, or changing the game.

Since I mentioned Flow, I should notice that things aren't always in motion. We might also have a

* Standing Wave. An energy that can't flow.

and

* The Unexpressed. Potential energy. Maybe corresponding to consciousness. Or to anything latent, anything that feels like it needs to happen, but which hasn't manifested yet.

* Completion. Reaching a goal. Success and simultaneously Death, as the game is over.

This is a very quick, sloppy and incomplete collection of patterns that potentially might be candidates. Not something methodically thought through, tested and carefully selected. Simply to indicate other ways of looking at it. I'm trying to provide a bit of a challenge, not to propose a competing system.

I'd imagine a collection of patterns like those, which could be sequenced for different purposes, and which could be combined any which way, to create new deeper meanings. They should make sense in any order. Any two of them put together should have a clear meaning.

Of course for such a pattern language to be immediately useful, it has to be very simple to understand and one should be able to choose the appropriate pattern in a few seconds.

I'm thinking of de Bono's Six Thinking Hats for comparison. One can teach somebody to use them with a 2 minute explanation, they make sense right away, and one can usually categorize a statement as one of the six categories in a second or so.

Once one gets lost in "Hm, what might he possibly have meant by that?" or "Hm, that doesn't seem to fit here!" then the system breaks down. It wouldn't work as a system if there sometimes isn't any fit, or if one has to resort to lengthy explanations to make it fit.

What is narrative writing?

Narrative writing is writing that has a story, characters, conflict, and other essential parts of a story. Narrative writing is often synonymous with a story.

And this differs greatly compared to other forms of writing, like in textbooks and certain nonfiction books.

However, if you’re writing a story of some kind, that is narrative writing, where a narrator is telling the story.

Parts of Narrative Writing

Narrative writing is made of specific parts. These parts of a book end up completing the whole, and are necessary for writing a good novel.

Character – The characters are essential. It’s extremely difficult to tell a story without them, as character development is one of the best parts in narrative writing. Think of your characters as the driving force of the narrative.

Conflict – This part of narrative writing is where the tension comes from. Conflict of any form, whether it’s between characters, between elements in your setting, or even in your plot, is essential for not only a good book, but for narrative writing.

Plot – This is the main point of your story. Where is it all going and what’s happening while we get there? This can often include any conflict, but is usually a bigger “main” portion of your story, and therefore the narrative.

Setting – The setting of a story is really what determines its genre as well as its learning curve. The learning curve refers to how much readers need to learn about the world, aka, how different it is from our own. The setting adds to this extensively because if your book is in a new world, more worldbuilding is necessary, which means it will bleed heavily into your narrative.

Theme – These are embedded into your story even if you’re not trying to. Narrative writing tells a story and with any stories, lessons are learned and these become the themes of your story. Whether you mean to or not, your own thoughts about the world and important values bleed into your work within the narrative writing.

Narrative Writing Arc – This is the story structure the narrative takes. This includes things like the inciting incident, key milestones like the first slap and second slap, the climax, the resolution, and even nuances like the character arc.

"Narrative journalism" is a relatively new term to describe what used to be called commentary, analysis or opinion when I was earning my journalism chops back in the 60's.

People love to invent new words and phrases for things that have existed for decades or even centuries. New words and phrases are one way to convince other people that what you are discussing is new and exciting.

Edward R. Murrow was working for CBS when he was sent to London in 1937 to serve as CBS's director of European operations.

His commentaries from London during the blitz made him one America's most popular radio broadcasters. He style of reporting could today be characterized as narrative journalism.

Murrow used words the way an artist uses brushes. Listeners back in America found themselves spellbound by his descriptions of bombs raining down on London, by his talking about the way people were hunkered down in subway stations, by the devastation people saw come morning.

He made people feel what it was like to live day to day in such an approximation of hell.

Listening to him was like reading a good novel.

The best narrative journalism is like that. It lets you understand complex situations that cannot be adequately explained within the constructs of normal journalism.

It also can be badly misused to disguise the work of a gifted propagandist, what some people call agenda journalism.

A great story told well can make many people believe that white is blue or that two plus two is five.

Too often in the past and continuing today, what was once called commentary or opinion is now accepted as "just the facts" journalism because the "facts" reinforce our views rather than reality.

Such journalism has existed for good or for ill for a very long time. We've just changed the labels.

Thank you Mr. Conlon for your question.

From Dictionary.com:

“A person who tells a story; in literature, the voice that an author takes on to tell a story. This voice can have a personality quite different from the author's. For example, in his story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe makes his narrator a raving lunatic”

The *narrator* of a story is *not* the author— it is a voice the author creates to tell the story. Even a first person narrator— one who says “I saw, I felt, I thought” is not the author; it is a created voice. Do not ever confuse the two.

Voices can be first person, where either a major or a minor character tells the story, or third person, where a disconnected, discorporate voice tells it.

In a third person voice, that voice can either be an objective observer or an omniscient one. The former knows only what it can observe via the 5 senses; the latter knows thoughts and emotions within the various characters in the story. Omniscience may be tightly limited to only one character or broader.

The word "narrative" means story. It is no wonder why narrative writing is broadly defined as story writing. This form of writing is characterized by the main character in a particular setting, which engages with a crisis or event in a significant way. Sometimes, the narrator of the story is a character in it and narrates the story from his/her perspective.

There are specific elements that every piece of narrative writing needs to have.

· Setting: The time and location where the story takes place.

· Characters: The people who push forward the story from one point to the next.

· Plot: An event or a series of events that give the characters something to react to.

· Conflict: The struggle between opposing forces that create interest in the stories.

Take any book (fiction) for instance. You will always find these elements in writing. In the Harry Potter books, by JK Rowling, there’s always a setting – mostly Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, a bunch of characters, an interesting plot (like the Triwizard Tournament in the fourth book), and a lot of conflict between the characters.

Most pieces of narrative writing follow the structure mentioned above. However, it depends solely on the knowledge, skills and preferences of a writer and how the narrative is presented to the readers. Use of more vivid details of the settings as well as the characters allows the readers to visualize the story as if it is happening right in front of them. This is where imagery plays a larger role.

The simplest and easiest way to break it down is in a five-part structure.

Exposition: This is where the reader is introduced to the world and the characters. Not a lot is happening here but there is a lot of important information.

Rising action: This will be the bulk of the story. These are the things that create tension and intrigue in a story.

Climax: This is where the s*** hits the fan. This is the big defining moment that the story has been leading up to. This is usually only one scene but is the most important scene. This is usually closer to the end than the beginning.

Falling action: This is where things start to actually get resolved. Things are starting to settle down after the climax. The tension has been released and the energy of the story is lessening.

Resolution: As the name suggests, this is where things have been resolved. A good narrative will tie things up and leave the reader satisfied.

There are other ways to break down a narrative structure such as breaking it into three acts, or archetypes such as the hero's journey that are more specific about what happens in each section, but this is the basic structure that you will find in every narrative.