1. Narratology: Plot Structures

2. PLOT Series of things that characters do, feel, think, or say. Must be important to the outcome of the story. A list of events or incidents alone is not a plot. Series of things that characters do, feel, think, or say. Must be important to the outcome of the story. A list of events or incidents alone is not a plot.

3. INCIDENT vs. CRUCIAL ACTION Most stories: braiding one’s hair = Rapunzel: braiding her hair =

4. PLOT =

6. PLOT

7. Events Actions Feelings Motives Thoughts Words

8. PLOT =

9. Plot vs. Story Examples Table 1: E.M. Forster’s distinction between ‘story’ & ‘plot’. Definitions storystory plotplot http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/ellibst/NarrativeTheory/chapt6.htm The king died, and then the queen died. Narration of events Element of causality involved The king died, and then the queen died of grief.

10. Significance of Plot? Perhaps the greatest feat in the history of narrative art was the leap from the folktale to the psychological novel that places the engine of action in the characters rather than in the plot. Jerome Bruner Actual Minds, Possible Worlds Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1992, p. 37

11. The Gustav Freytag Model

12. The Freytag Model Inciting Incident Complication Climax Falling Action Resolution

13. The Allen Tilley Model http://www.unf.edu/~atilley/

14. The Tilley Model 1 2 3 4 56

15. Stability Disruption Temporary Binding Failure & Increased Disruption Permanent Binding

16. The Tilley Model Reflection

17. The Vladimir Propp Model (Joseph Campbell’s “Monomyth”) Separation Initiation Return Departure from the known and safe world. Entanglement with strange and dangerous forces. Return home, changed. Often with some means of salvation for others.

18. The Vladimir Propp Model (Joseph Campbell’s “Monomyth”)

19. PLOT PACING Fabula vs. Narration

20. ISOCHRONY Steady pace. Without speedups or slowdowns

21. ISOCHRONY: FABULA vs. NARRATION Pace of narration and pace of fabula are equal relative to each other.

22. ANISOCHRONY Events are not equally paced. and there are slowdowns. There are speedups

23. FABULA vs. NARRATION In the fabula, time always moves at the same pace, just as it does in real life. In the narration, the narrator tells some things rapidly, skipping over details, and some things slowly, taking lots of time and telling lots of details.

24. PLOT ORDER Fabula vs. Narration

25. ANACHRONY Events told out of order.

26. PROLEPSIS The portrayal of something existing before its proper historical time.

27. ELLIPSIS Leaving an event out of the sequence of events.

28. ELEMENTS OF PLOT Events: The things that happened in the imaginary world of the fabula. Narrative Events: the events that the narrator selected to include in the story. Narrative Order: the order in which the narrator chose to tell the events.

29. CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER Fabula:1234567 Narrative Events:1234 Narrative Order:1234

30. Anachrony Fabula:1234567 Narrative Events:12345 Narrative Order:41325 Analepsis: events from the past Prolepsis: events from the future Ellipsis: Events left out.

31. Presentation prepared by: Carolyn P. Henly Meadowbrook High School 4901 Cogbill Rd. Richmond, VA 23234 cphenly@comcast.net