Looking into Narrative Structure

To be able to do a short story for the module of Creative Design Practice, I felt as though I needed a deeper understanding of narrative as I wanted my animation for it to tell a story. I wanted to be able to understand how to build up a narrative and how to utilise this in a way that would make the story meaningful yet pleasurable for an audience. So, I decided to look further into narrative structure.

Upon researching, I learned there are seven popular story structures that are used. Some of which, due to the fact that I am telling a short story, such as the three-act structure, are not relevant for my work at this moment.

The first story structure I looked into, was Freytag’s Pyramid. This narrative structure tells that there are five different dramatic points to a story:

1. Introduction or exposition – This is where the story begins, this part of any narrative focuses solely on setting up the major fictional elements like the characters, the settings and building the world where the conflict will happen

2. Rising action – This stage usually takes up most of the story, it focuses on the build-up of the conflict of the story up until the climax

3. Climax – Of every story, the climax is the most important part. This is considered to be the peak of the story. The turning point.

4. Falling action – This part focuses on the falling out of the climax, it tells the audience whether there are any irreversible changes to the story, if there are any problems caused by the aftermath of the climax.

5. Resolution – This is where the story comes to an end. It is the very conclusion of the story, the decision of whether the main character learned anything from the conflict, if any main character died, etc.

The Hero’s Journey is very known in stories of the fantasy genre such as Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. The structure for this particular narrative is the following:

1. The Ordinary World

2. The Call of Adventure

3. Refusal of the Call

4. Meeting the Mentor

5. Crossing the First Threshold

6. Tests, Allies, Enemies

7. Approach of the Inmost Cave

8. The Ordeal

9. Reward

10. The Road Back

11. Resurrection

12. Return with the elixir

This is another structure that would simply be too big to complete for a short story animation, being that it is too complex and layered, and usually divided in three different acts.

There are several others that I did not feel were appropriate but there was one that I felt could work to help me develop my story which was Dan Harmon’s Story Circle.

This story structure denotes:

1. Comfort Zone

2. Need or desire

3. Unfamiliar situation

4. Adaptation

5. Get what they wanted

6. But pay a price

7. Return to comfort

8. Having changed

This research in particular helped me with not only some inspiration but it also gave me some tips on how I could write a story that would not only make sense but would also keep audiences involved. Now, I just need to decide what this story in particular will be.