Thoughts on narrative structure

[therealjae]

All narrative exhibits tension between the desire to construct an over-arching storyline that ties events together in a seamless explanatory framework and the desire to capture the complexities of the events experienced, including haphazard details, uncertainties, and conflicting sensibilities among protagonists. The former proclivity offers a

Comments

[c_elisa]

I think one reason fanfiction often doesn't have narrative structure is that it has existing narratives to play off of. A good drabble can *imply* a story without actually telling one, because the writer and the readers have so much shared knowledge of the characters and situation that we can all fill in the beginning and end from a glimpse of the middle. Or you can have a plotless fragment that fits into an existing, canonical story in such a way that it changes the nature of the story, and makes you go back and reinterpret it... or just fleshes out a bit of the story that's already in your head. It's not really challenging readers' desire for narratives -- it's relying on it, but offloading the actual building of the narrative onto the reader.

Experimental fiction can do similar things -- Pale Fire will give you a little piece of a story, sometimes out of sequence, then wander off and do something else entirely for a while, and you're expected to put the narrative together in your head. But I think it's much easier to carry off

[therealjae]

I was hoping you'd reply to this. :-) Hmm. Okay, I'll start here:

I'm actually not sure why non-fan fiction is so completely dominated by narrative.See, I think I do, or at least I think I have the beginnings of an inkling. Narrative isn't some brand-new, foreign, complex framework that you have to become proficient in in order to tell decent stories. Narrative structure is something we've all internalized by the time we hit double digits in our ages. Sorting the events of our lives into cohesive narratives seems to help our brains process those events in ways that make them make sense to us. I actually find it *hard* to write a piece, of whatever length, that *doesn't* have narrative structure. Half of the so-called vignettes I've written for challenges have been stories pretending not to have plots. I used to think this was something weird about me, but the more I read about narrative for work, the more I think it's the rest of you guys that are the real freaks

[c_elisa]

See, I think I do, or at least I think I have the beginnings of an inkling. Narrative isn't some brand-new, foreign, complex framework that you have to become proficient in in order to tell decent stories. Narrative structure is something we've all internalized by the time we hit double digits in our ages. Sorting the events of our lives into cohesive narratives seems to help our brains process those events in ways that make them make sense to us.

Oh yes, I agree with that. I'm just saying that in every *other* form of writing there are things that are not stories -- poetry often includes a story, not always; ditto nonfiction. In speech we tell stories a lot, but we don't emit one every time we open our mouths. Narrative is important to how humans think, but it's not the only thing we do. So why is it that non-fan fiction, specifically, is so much more dominated by narrative structure than everything else? Why does it seem to be 99.9% of fiction instead of, oh, 90% or 95

[dafnagreer]

Ooooh, now I found that really fascinating. (I know, how unlike me!)

Like the previous reply, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that fanfic operates within an existing narrative that is the canon of show. Also, fanfic is all about what we don't get from the show, and mostly, *story* is the one thing that the show does provide. (And now I wonder if there's substantively more *story*-type fic in fandoms that *don't* provide that narrative -- like popslash, for ex.)

The idea of the push and pull between detail and story is really interesting to me particularly in the light of the latest Harry Potter, in which Rowling sort of tried to have it both ways and the reaction from some that it slowed the story down and the reaction from others that all the detail was wonderful.

[cappuccinogirl]

Maybe because fan fiction is often an exploration of character?

I'm also going to suggest that it has to do with this being many people's first experience with writing fiction. They're experimenting and trying to find their own voice as writers. Experimentation is a good way to do that I find. Also, I find that I'm often playing off an existing story-arc. The phenomenon of the 'post-ep' seems to be one which is suited to a non-conventional narative style as the writer is, in a way, trying to understand the story arc someone else has written by writing an add on to it. It's like an essay, but a fictitous one.

[buhrger]

Are deliberate efforts to challenge or undermine this traditional narrative structure (like the film "Adaptation" or the plays of Bertolt Brecht) actually more successful at conveying the complexities of human experience than more traditional narratives are?
in my experience, yes they are. but i may well be a weirdo in this respect. (heck, i'd even agree with the statement if you remove the word "human"...