Subjective Character Identification: the audience is given unique access to what a range of characters see and do.
Objective Character Identification: the audience is given unique access to a character’s point of view such as seeing things from the character’s mind, dreams, fantasies or memories.Anachronic: where narratives involve the use of flashbacks/forwards with no clear dominance between any of the narrative threads. These narratives also often repeat scenes either directly, or from a different perspective.
Forking-Path: where narratives juxtapose alternative versions of a story, showing the possible outcomes that might result from small changes in a single event or group of events. This narrative introduces a number of plotlines that usually contradict each other.
Episodic: where narratives are organised as an abstract series or a narrative ‘anthology’. Abstract types are characterised by the operation of a non-narrative formal system, which appears to dictate the organisation of narrative elements such as a sequence of numbers or the alphabet. Anthology types consist of a series of shorter tales which are disconnected but share a random similarity.
Split Screens: where narratives are different from the other types of narratives because their modularity is articulated along spatial rather than temporal lines. These films divide the screen into two or more frames, juxtaposing events within the same visual field in a sustained fashion.
Narrative: defined as “a chain of events in a cause-effect relationship occurring in a time” – Bordwell and Thompson (1980)
Diegesis: internal world created by the story that the characters experience and encounter.
Story: all events referenced both explicitly in a narrative and inferred (including a back story)
Plot: the events directly incorporated into the action of the text and the order in which they are presented.
Plot: the events directly incorporated into the action of the text and the order in which they are presented.
Unrestricted Narration: a narrative which has no limits to the information that is presented, e.g. a news bulletin.
Restricted Narration: only offers minimal information regarding the narrative, e.g. thrillers.
