Narrative

How it is used

More technical than 'story'. Critics discuss narrative structure, narrative voice and narrative techniques, and say a novel has a fragmented or linear narrative. As an adjective: a narrative poem tells a story. In politics and media, 'narrative' also means a way of presenting events.

Example sentences

1. The narrative jumps back and forth between 1980 and the present day.

2. Woolf breaks with the traditional linear narrative of the Victorian novel.

Common collocations

• narrative structure
• narrative voice
• linear narrative
• narrative technique
• first-person narrative

Related terms

• narratorThe voice that tells the story to the reader. It may be a character in the story or an outside voice, and it is not the same as the author.
• point of viewThe position from which a story is told, which decides whose eyes we see events through and how much we learn, for example first-person or third-person.
• plotThe series of connected events in a story and the way the writer arranges them, especially how one event causes another.
• flashbackA scene that interrupts the main story to show events that happened earlier, often to explain a character's past or motives.

More terms: Narration and Point of View

• first-person narrator
• omniscient narrator
• unreliable narrator
• stream of consciousness