The term Narrative is used when we want to describe how the information in a fictional

or non-fictional text is unfolded or revealed to us. The general trend is to use the term narrative
when talking about fictional literature texts, but the term can also be used in terms of Media
Studies, showing that it does imply the idea that we explore the way in which the information
contained within a text is revealed to us, having implications for the way in which print texts,
images on computer screens and sound texts are constructed.
The most important aspect of the narrative is how the information contained is
controlled. In case of a tabloid newspaper, it does contain a narrative and it is controlled via
headline, the opening paragraph, the illustration and the final outcome or conclusion of the
narrative.
The Enigma code is an important tool of the narrative. In the control of the flow of
information we are teased by a riddle that requires us to guess the next piece of information.
For example the television serial dramas with the cliffhangers or the cinema trailers. Even the
newspapers contain the enigma code, teasing the reader with snippets of information in an
effort to persuade him to buy a copy to find out more.
The narrative analysis should not be used only in the case of texts that offer us a story.
In case of magazine advertisement, we are offered a frozen moment and we are meant to
imagine what happened before and after that specific frozen moment, constructing for
ourselves a narrative, influenced by our social and cultural experiences or by our awareness of
the recent events. It depends on us how we read the text.
The importance of narrative analysis:

1. Attention shifted from content to structure and storytelling

2. Similarities and differences in narrative across media forms
3. Reveals ‘the meanings and pleasures of these narrative forms relate to the wider
disposition of social power’. Such narrative discourses offer us ‘powerful ways of
understanding the social world and our place in it’.
When it comes to the second point we should take in consideration that narrative
structure is an important dimension in cinema too. Bordwell and Thompson pointed out that
when we speak of “going to the movies” we almost always mean we are going to see a
narrative film, since the pleasure of going to the cinema is to become engrossed in the
“invisible” process of storytelling.

The narrative is “a chain of events in cause and effect relationship in time and space”,
where the prime agents of cause in film narrative are the characters themselves.
In a narrative the characters are not real people even when the characters are based on real
persons, and these characters are constructed through multiple or single traits in a narrative,
being able to differentiate between well-developed and not too developed characters.
Character traits can involve attitudes, skills, preferences, psychological drives etc. The traits
of the characters are not naturally born, they are there to help make up the character
function in the narrative, and even when a trait seems irrelevant it is not actually true,
because it may become more than relevant later in the narrative.

The prime agents of cause may not always be the characters. Sometimes the causes are
supernatural, gods, aliens etc. or natural: natural disasters, animals. When these causes are
set, the character’s traits stand up entering the action to develop the narrative.

The audience tend to understand the narrative as a result of cause and effect and
establish a casual motivation, asking what might have caused a certain event and what would
be the effect of that certain effect if.

In detective movies the narrative structure is segmented into story, plot and: crime
conceived, crime planned, crime committed, crime discovered, detective investigates,
detective reveals, a,b and c. In other words, in case of other narrative films, the structure is
similar to the one in literary texts. Exhibition, crisis, climax and resolution.

Sometimes the movies may present causes but postpone or even do not present their
effect, leaving the audience imagine it.