"...The most important is the plot, the ordering of the incidents; for tragedy is a representation, not of men, but of action and life, of happiness and unhappiness - and happiness and unhappiness are bound up with action. ...It is their characters indeed, that make men what they are, but it is by reason of their actions that they are happy or the reverse." (Poetics - Aristotle (Penguin Edition) p39-40 4th century BC)
Successful stories require actions that change the lives of the characters in the story. They also contain some sort of resolution, where that change is registered, and which creates a new balance for the characters involved.
When unpacking a narrative in order to find it’s meaning, there are a series of codes and conventions that need to be considered. When we look at a narrative we examine the conventions of
- Genre
- Character
- Form
- Time
And use knowledge of these conventions to help us interpret the text. In particular, Time is something that we understand as a convention - narratives do not take place in real time but may telescope out (the slow motion shot which replays a winning goal) or in (an 80 year life can be condensed into a two hour biopic).
Roland Barthes describes a text as
"a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can read, they are indeterminable...the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language..." (S/Z - 1974 translation)
What he is basically saying is that a text is like a tangled ball of threads, which needs unravelling so we can separate out the colours. Once we start to unravel a text, we meet a complete plurality of potential meanings. We can start by looking at a narrative in one way, from one viewpoint, bringing to bear one set of previous experience, and create one meaning for that text. You can continue by unravelling the narrative from a different angle, by pulling a different thread if you like, and create an entirely different meaning.
Think of a feature film, and jot down a) the strict chronological order in which events occur b) the order in which each of the main characters finds out about these events a) shows story, b) shows plot construction. Plot keeps audiences interested e.g.) in whether the children will discover Mrs Doubtfire is really their father, or shocks them, e.g.) the 'twist in the tale" at the end of The Sixth Sense. Identifying Narrator Who is telling this story is a vital question to be asked when analysing any media text. Stories may be related in the first or third person.
Very few screen stories take place in real time. Whole lives can be dealt with in the 90 minutes of a feature film, an 8 month siege be encompassed within a 60 minute TV documentary. There are many conventions to indicate time passing. Devices to manipulate time include
- Flashbacks
- Dream sequences
- Repetition
- Different characters' POV
- Flash forwards
- Real time interludes
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Pre-figuring of events that have not yet taken place
Each story has a location. This may be physical and geographical (e.g. a war zone) or it may be mythic (e.g. the Wild West). Virtual locations are now a feature of many newsrooms (e.g. the computers and holograms of the BBC's Nine O’clock News). There are sets of conventions to do with that location, often associated with genre and form (e.g. all space ships seem to look the same inside).
