What are the six elements of narrative?

Narrative generally consists of six elements: time, place, character, cause, passage, and outcome of events.

Narrative is most closely related to time. Whether it is the process of the character's activities, or the process of development and change of things, all show a certain order and continuity, that is, the "process" in a certain time under certain conditions. Statements are generally arranged in chronological order. If the narrative has more than two heads, can also be arranged in parallel order of statements. Narrative generally do not use the center of the sentence.

Expanded Information

Traditional narrative works use a predominantly bystander tone, i.e., third-person narration. More recent narrative works have more first-person narration. Another rarer type of narrative perspective is the second-person narrative. In addition to the three perspectives mentioned above, another more important special case is the narrative that changes persona and point of view. To summarize, there are four cases: third-person narration, first-person narration, second-person narration, and narration with a change of person or point of view.

1, third person

Narrative from the position of a bystander who has nothing to do with the story. Since the narrator is usually an unidentified bystander, this results in this type of narration being traditionally characterized by a lack of perspective constraints.

2. First person

First person narration is a work in which the narrator is also a character in the story, and the narrative point of view is thus shifted to the inside of the work, which becomes an internalized focus of narration. There are two characteristics of this narrative perspective: first, as a narrator and a character, the character can not only participate in the course of events, but also leave the setting of the work to describe and evaluate to the reader. This dual role makes this character different from other characters in the work, more transparent and easier to understand than other characters in the story.

Secondly, his perspective as a narrator is limited by his identity as a character, and he cannot narrate what is unknown to this character. This limitation causes the subjectivity of the narration, just like the focal point perspective in painting, because of the limitation of the projection relationship, there is a difference between the size of the near and far and the front and back of the obscuration, but also because of this will produce a realistic feeling of being in yesterday's world. Modern narrative works focusing on subjective psychological description often use this method.

3, second person

This is a rare narrative perspective. Because here it seems mandatory to pull the reader into the story, even though it's only a virtual reader, but it will always make the real reader feel a little strange.

Baidu Encyclopedia - Narrative Perspective

Baidu Encyclopedia - Narrative