Neka tamo teorija kao čisto radi reda

The basics

A narrative – recounts a story, a series of events in a temporal sequence.

Fiction – emulates what might have happened in a fictional universe and under its governing
principals
Non-fiction – documents events and circumstances for which there is proof that they happened
in the recorded history
The SIGN according to De Saussure consists of signifier and signified.
SIGNIFIER something that represents a concept (spoken word, written word, flag, picture, etc.)
SIGNIFIED is a mental concept that is represented by the signifier (NOT universal). Signifieds
divide reality into categories

Structure of Story

Story consists of – EVENTS placed in a sequence to present a process of change. An event

depicts some sort of physical or mental activity, and occurance in time, or a state of existing in
time.
Events of a sequence are enchained (distributed in sequence), embedded (integrated in
sequence), or joined (distributed and integrated)
Every sequence containts at least two events, one to establish a narrative sitaution, and one to
alter that situation
Events function either as KERNELS or SATELLITES
Kernels initiate, increase, or conclude an uncertainty. These are points of action that advance a
sequence and cannot be removed, reordered or replaced without substantially altering that
sequence
Satellite events amplify or fill in the outline of a sequence by maintaining, retarding, or
prolonging the kernel events they accompany or surround. Can be omitted and reordered

Ordering of the events – a story’s temoporal and logical orders are not the same. The term
story marks temporal/chronological sequence, while plot

marks events causally as well as temporally

Characters – perform functions in relation to the events. The subject of a story is the
performative agency of action, and the object is the goal or destination of that action. They
exhibit semantic features we interpret as traits (traits cite a historical culture’s assumption of
what qualities are recognizable as “human nature”).
It is more precise to say that traits are not psychological features but semantic features (or
semes)

Genre – a particular narrative genre can be identified by the kind of events it organizes in
sequence, the principles of combination it follows, the functions that actors perform, and the
traits it draws upon to present characters
Narration/Discourse

Discourse is the category that comprises various elements of transmission, only through
discourse do we learn about the story

Time in discourse is split into: order, frequency, and duration

Order of events: The events are almost never told in the ideal sequence that they happened
Anachrony is a discrepancy between the order of events in a story and the order in which they
are presented in the plot.
They can be either: analepsis (flashback) textual point of retrospection, reaches back to a time
anterior to that being narrated, often for the purpose of exposition
prolepsis (flashforward) flashes ahead to events yet to occur in the story
sequence, often for the purpose of foreshadowing

Frequency – indicates the number of times a specific event occurs in the story in relation to the
number of times it is narrated
Singulative – the singular event occurs once and is narrated once
Iterative – event occurs more than once but is narrated once
Repeated – event occurs once and is narrated more than once

Duration – measures the length of narrational time against the temporal span of the story
Summary – the pace is accelerated through a textual condensation or compression of a given
story-period into a relatively short statement of its main features
Scene – a scene, represented in the exchange of dialogue, coordinates the duration of story and
narrational times so that they appear equivalent.
Slow-down or stretch – a slowdown occurs at any point when the time of the narration exceeds
that of the story
Pause – a pause goes to the extreme to stress narrational time over the story time. It occurs at
any point in the text when the time of narration continues and that of the story ceases.
Ellipsis – story time skips some events without mentioning them
Narrative mode – the kinds of utterances through which a narrative is conveyed
Divided into: speech, report of action, description, and comment
In practice, narrative modes are mixed

Speech – Direct speech is the most mimetic narrative mode, since it gives an almost complete
illusion of direct, i.e. unmediated representation
Indirect speech – the element of mediation is more noticeable when speech or though
is rendered indirectly

Report of an action – report is the mode that informs the reader about events and actions in
the story

Description – narrative mode that represents objects in space, the existents of the story, things
that can be seen, heard, or felt in some way. We distinguish between description of place, time
and character

Commentary – in the narrative mode of comment one notices the mediator (i.e. the narrator)
most. In this mode we find evaluations of the story’s events and characters, general
observations or judgements

Narrative voice – who speaks?

By identifying a narrator responsible for the telling, prose narration often calls attention to its
status as an utterance originated by a person
The position of telling can be different with respect to the produced narrative or the proces of
telling (diegis)

Homodiegetic (when the narrator is also a character, 1st person), autodiegetic (when the
narator is also the protagonist)
Heterodiegetic (when the narrator is outside the story, 3rd person)

Focalization – who sees?

The narrating agent of a text and its “point of view” are not the same. Agency raises the
question of who supplies the narration, while point of view raises the question of whose vision
determines what is being narrated (the reflector)

Zero – the one who knows more than any of the characters, use it to provide readers with as
much information as possible

Internal (figural) – can be three types: fixed – restricted to one character; use it to show
experiences of certain character
variable – changes between several characters; use it to
show different perspective of different characters
multiple – character has several points of view
regarding what is observed; use it if you want to show how thoughts of your characters race
through their mind

External – readers don’t have access to the character’s thoughts; use it to intrigue readers and
make them suspect your characters

Representation of consciousness

Interior monologue
Psychonarration – the heterodiegetic narrator remains in the foreground throughout, even
adds some general observations not originating in the character
Narrated monologue – also known as free indirect discourse, this represents a mixture between
psychonarration and interior monologue. Here the narrator often sets the scene, but the
charatcer’s thoughts are reproduced ‘directly’, and in a way that one would imagine the
character to think