Beyond the Hero’s Journey - The Architecture, Structure and Strategy of Narrative

When might you use Narrative Enigmas? @r4isstatic Events can be both Statements & Enigmas An event might make statements, establishing facts/truths, but in turn, pose new questions both about what’s happened before, and what might happen in the future. - they’re interesting because they engage the viewer. - they invite the viewer to keep a tally of facts and questions - and to constantly assess the importance of said facts/questions (will they be kernels or satellites?) - all of which is to guess where the story will go next. - if it goes in a different direction from that which is expected, is that satisfying, or inconsistent/annoying? Which are more popular/prevalent? Statements or Enigmas? “Most programmes predicated on such central narrative enigmas fail to live up to their concepts, as demonstrate by the failure of numerous enigma-driven programmes such as ‘FlashForward’. Instead, the majority of serial plots focus more on questions about future events triggered by narrative statements, rather than focusing on enigmas from the narrative past.” (so are enigmas more just triggers, like in a detective plot within a serial narrative, or the focus more for ’special’ event episodes?) What else is interesting about all this?

Story time Discourse time Narration time @r4isstatic The most fundamental technique we can play around with is time - the ordering of the revelation. There are three types of time to be aware of - they exist in parallel, but can be used for effect, too. Story time = chronological time within the story world = history, what you look back on at the end. Whether it ‘makes sense’ or not can be a strength and a weakness.. Discourse time = “temporal structure and duration of the story as told”, reordering of events to tell the best story, flashbacks, flash forwards etc. (utilised often in fiction but also journalism…we’ll come back to this) Narration time = “temporal framework involved in telling and receiving the story” - screen time, reading time - has a great effect on the experience, but also isn’t fully under the author’s control. It can be harnessed, though, in the release of narrative - cliffhangers to maintain suspense, return visits, and so on.