• What is the narrative?
• Characteristics of the narrative
• Narrative genres
• Elements of the narrative
• Types of narrators
• Character types

We explain what narrative is, its characteristics and narrative genres. In addition, its elements, types of narrator and character.

The narrative presents anecdotes starring characters.

What is the narrative?

The narrative is one of the great literary genres, present throughout the centuries in different forms, cultures and areas, both orally and in writing, that satisfy one of the typical needs of human civilization: that of storytelling. The presence of a voice that tells the story, called the narrator, is its fundamental feature and that best defines it, distinguishing it from other literary genres.

Narrative encompasses many narrative genres, which tend to change historically. However, they always have in common the presence of a plot anecdotes and stories to tell, a specific narrative voice that enunciates them, and there are characters that star in it and fulfill various roles within it.

From the first myths foundations and mythologies, up to recent literary, cinematographic and comic productions, the narrative has accompanied the humanity and has served as the stage to represent and preserve his thought, their values and their ways of seeing the universe.

The term “narrative” is also often used as a loan in other areas of knowledge and social Sciences, as the politics, to refer to the set of ideas, values ​​and relationships that are proposed from a conception or model of the country, and that start from a specific relationship with the past and with the future, that is, they propose a story in their own way.

Characteristics of the narrative

The narrative, broadly speaking, is characterized by the following:

• The presence of a narrator. Every story always and necessarily has a narrator, that is, a voice that carries the story forward and provides the necessary details to recreate it imaginatively. Said narrator may or may not be part of the story (a character) and may use many different resources to tell it.
• The stories may or may not be fiction. In cases where the anecdote is all the fruit of the author's imagination, the term “fiction” is used, although a narrative work is never 100% disconnected from the real references, not even in the case of fantastic stories. Conventionally, “non-fiction” is understood to be journalistic, autobiographical narratives or Chronicles.
• The prose. Although in ancient times it was common to use the verse To memorize stories intended for oral enunciation, prose has long been used to write narrations.
• The stories address a plot. That is, they must always have something to tell, some succession of events, be they real and external to the characters, or imaginary and subjective, internal or psychological.

Narrative genres

The comic strip is a current narrative genre with roots in antiquity.

Narrative genres have changed a lot over time, as they adapt to the expressive needs of humanity in its historical moment. Initially, in the Antiquity Classic and the Middle Ages, the epic and the singing of deeds respectively, traditional forms of the epic, in which the exploits of mythological heroes were described in long-standing texts.

It is also important to mention the myth and the legend, some of the oldest forms of storytelling and oral tradition. However, in modern times we consider as narrative genres the following:

• The story modern. A typically short story, with few characters and moderate breadth, in which a main character is accompanied from the beginning of a series of events to the end, and in which a transformation, a peak event or an outcome is usually witnessed shocking. It was a widely cultivated genus during the 19th and 20th centuries.
• The novel. The great narrative genre of the modern world, especially in the last two centuries, is a form of long-term story divided into chapters, in which the reader delves deeply into the motivations and the internal world of the characters. This genre has been reinvented many times and currently entails enormous literary freedom, being able to pass itself off as documents of all kinds, or approach the rehearsal, to the poetry and other genres at your convenience.
• The chronicle. Approaching the journalism and in a fine line with respect to reality, the chronicle is a common genre among explorers, journalists, travelers and other narrators of what has been lived. In it the imagination is put at the service of the truth subjective of the author, that is, it is used to narrate what has been experienced in the most interesting way possible.
• The newspaper. A very common genre during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, consists of the recording of the author's daily events in a sequence dated and organized chronologically, so that we can accompany him during the recount of important events in his life, on a trip or in a war, for example.
• The cartoon. Halfway between illustration and literature, the genre of the comic or the comic it is a contemporary form of storytelling that has roots in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Sometimes called "sequential art" or "sequential storytelling", it consists of a set of images and text placed side by side to compose a recognizable story.
• The cinematography. A modern narrative genre that constitutes an artistic genre in itself, technically related to the Photography. It uses audiovisual technology (to capture images and sound) to tell a fictional story, using special effects and camera resources to give it verisimilitude.
• The videogames. Another essentially contemporary form of stories, the result of the rapid development and popularization of computers at the end of the 20th century, which allowed the creation of narrative and interactive audiovisual experiences, in which the user enters fictional worlds to participate (or sometimes control ) the unfolding of the story.

Elements of the narrative

The elements that make up any form of narrative are the following:

• The narrator. The voice in charge of telling the story from a predetermined point of view and using a specific language.
• The plot. The set of anecdotes and descriptions that make up the story, that is, what happens to the characters and that the reader wants to discover as they read.
• The characters. The instances to which the events of the plot occur, whether they star in it or not. The narrator may or may not be one of them.
• Stage. With more or less presence in the story, it is about the place and time in which the events of the plot occur. It may be a remote future, a specific past epoch, or a diffuse present, to name a few examples.
• The language or style. It is about the way in which you choose to tell the plot, from a linguistic and poetic point of view, that is, the type of words used, the general tone (atmosphere) of the story, and so on.

Types of narrators

The narrators can be of very different types, depending on the way they tell their story, that is, fundamentally, on the point of view they choose and their participation (or not) in the plot. Thus, we can talk about:

• Narrators in the first person. Those who speak of "I" and tell the story as if they were part of it, that is, they are both a character and a narrator. Therefore, they can be the protagonists of the story (protagonist narrator) or they can be witnesses to what happened (witness narrator).
• Second person narrators. Those who tell the story to a narrator, that is, who constantly address a second grammatical person ("you", "you", "you", etc.). This narrator is very rare, due to the stylistic and narrative limitations that it implies.
• Third person narrators. Those who speak of "he" or "she" or "they", to refer to the characters in the story. This means that they see the events narrated from the outside, without being part of them, and without being a character themselves. They can also be, omniscient storytellers, who see and know everything, as if they had God's perspective; or disembodied witness narrators, whose best equivalent would be the point of view of the cinematographic camera.

Character types

The characters, too, can be classified according to their role within the story told, as follows:

• Main character. To whom the story happens, that is, the main character, who may or may not be the narrator of it. The narration usually depends on him and accompanies him in his actions, and in the event of his death the story does not usually continue.
• Antagonistic characters. Those who oppose the protagonist's wishes or who serve as a counterweight, that is, the "villains" or "baddies" of the story. This does not necessarily mean that they must be evil from a moral point of view, but that they are simply on the opposite side of the protagonist.
• Secondary characters.Those who accompany the protagonist in the narration told, and who constitute his immediate emotional world, such as family, friends, partners, adventure companions, and so on. They can be dispensed with without the story necessarily having to come to an end.
• Tertiary characters. Those who populate the possible world of the story, and who do not play any role in it, beyond some specific or circumstantial event. We do not know anything about them, often not even their names, and we do not care, because they are practically part of the setting of the story.