Narrative v. Narration

Today’s presentations presented the concepts of narrative and narration, two similar sounding words that boast clear distinctions. A narrative is what we think of as a story. It is one situation, one problem, or one conflict which, through cause and effect, brings about a final solution in the end. There exists interplay between time and space and cause-and-effect. The plot of a narrative is everything visible and audible. This means story events or the diegesis and the non-diegetic events. Cause and effect occurs as agents of characters who create causes that result in effects. Characters usually have a body and distinguishable traits and psychologies. Whenever any film involves a mystery, it usually suppresses the causes but shows the effects. Time and space, two important elements of cause-and-effect, were also defined. There are three categories of time when talking about a film: order, duration and frequency. Order means the order of the story and can refer to flashbacks or flash-forwards and foreshadowing. Order can also be manipulated. Duration refers to the manipulation of the time span presented in the plot and operating in the story, or, more simply, the sum of all the slices of a story duration which yields a plot duration. Screen duration can expand a story duration or be the same amount as a story duration. Screen duration can also select certain parts of a story, for example, covering an entire day’s worth of events in just an hour. Frequency means something to be conveyed and increased frequency can make you see the same event in a different light. Space has three classifications: story space, plot space and screen space. Also, a film does not start, it begins and it does not finish, it ends. A narration is simply a plot’s way of distributing story information to achieve specific effects.