The Elements of Narrative Film

While narrative is universal, it is also infinitely variable. Narrative is the art and craft of constructing a story through a particular plot and point of view. The main features of a narrative film are story, plot, character, diegetic and nondiegetic elements, time, space, and narrative perspectives.

Story is the subject matter or raw material of a narrative – the actions and events, usually perceived in terms of a beginning, middle, and end. The plot orders the events and actions of the story according to particular temporal and spatial patterns with certain actions, individuals, and events of the story included and others omitted.

Characters are the central or minor figures that focus or motivate the events of the story. They are commonly identified and understood as a product of their appearance, gestures and actions, dialogue, and the comments of other characters. Film characters typically possess a combination of ordinary and extraordinary features, drawing from both reality and fantasy.

Classical narrative traditions tend to construct character behavior, emotions, and thoughts as consistent and coherent. Character coherence is the product of different psychological, historical, or other expectations that see people, and thus fictional characters, as fundamentally consistent and unique. A divided character subverts one or more expectations of character coherence. While inconsistent characters may sometimes be the result of poor characterization, a film may intentionally create an inconsistent or contradictory character as a way of challenging our sympathies and understanding.

Character depth refers to the layers of personal mystery and emotional and intellectual traits that comprise the “singular character” as a unique individual. Character grouping refers to the social arrangements of characters in relation to each other. Social hierarchies of class, gender, race, age, and geography, among other determinants, also come into play in the arrangements of film characters. Traditional narratives usually feature one or two protagonists, characters we identify as the positive forces in a film, and one or two prominent antagonists, characters who oppose the protagonists as negative forces.

Character types are conventional characters (e.g., hard-boiled detectives) who share distinguishing features with other, similar characters and are prominent within particular narrative traditions such as fairy tales, genre films, and comic books. A single trait or multiple traits may define character types. Figurative types are characters who are so exaggerated or reduced that they no longer seem realistic and instead seem more like abstractions. A figurative character can appear as an archetype—a reflection of a spiritual or abstract state or process, such as evil or oppression. However, when a film reduces an otherwise realistic character to a set of static traits that identify him or her in terms of a social, physical, or cultural category, that character becomes a stereotype.

Characters usually change over the course of a realist film and thus require us to evaluate and revise our understanding of them as they develop. The process through which characters move from one mental, physical, or social state to another in a particular film is called character development.

Most narratives involve two kinds of materials: those related to the story and those not related to the story. The entire world that a story describes or that the viewer infers is called its diegesis, which indicates the characters, places, and events shown in the story or implied by it. Nondiegetic elements include material used to tell the story that do not relate to its world, such as background music and credits.

A narrative can be organized according to a variety of temporal patterns. Most commonly, plots follow a linear chronology in which the selected events and actions proceed one after another through a forward movement in time typically motivated by a central character’s goals and desires.

Plot order describes how events and actions are arranged in relation to each other to create a chronology. While most films present plot in linear chronology, many films present narratives out of chronological order through flashbacks or, less commonly, flashforwards.

Hollywood films often follow the deadline structure, which creates dramatic tension by accelerating the plot toward a central event or action that must be accomplished by a certain moment, hour, day, or year. The deadline structure points to another common temporal pattern in film narrative: the doubled or parallel plot line, which refers to the implied simultaneity of, or connection between, two different plot lines, usually with their intersection at one or more points.

How often an event, person, or action is depicted by a plot can function to determine the meaning or value of those events within a narrative. Narrative duration refers to the length of time an event or action is presented in a plot, whereas narrative frequency describes how often those plot elements are repeated.

Narrative location refers to the indoor, outdoor, natural, and artificial spaces that not only serve as backgrounds for stories, but also take on cultural and social significance as characters explore these spaces, contrast them, conquer them, inhabit them, leave them, build on them, and transform them. Narrative space may be developed in four ways: as historical location, ideological location, psychological location, or symbolic space.

Plots are organized by the perspectives that inform them. The organizing perspective through which plots are constructed is referred to as narration. Narration carries and creates attitudes, values, and aims that are central to understanding any movie. A first-person narration refers to a story told through the point of view of a character in the film. Often used to introduce a first-person narration (though it has other uses), a narrative frame describes a context or character positioned outside of the story to bracket the film’s narrative in a way that helps define its terms and meaning.

The majority of films use a third-person narration, which takes a more detached vantage point, describing events more objectively from outside of the story. This form of narration can be categorized into five main types: omniscient narration, where the plot is presented from all angles; restricted narration, where one or two major characters are the focus; reflexive narration, in which the movie calls attention to the narrative point of view in order to subvert its narrative authority; unreliable narration, which raises questions about the truth of the narrative; and multiple narrations, where several perspectives are used to tell a story.