Narrative Structure

Temporal Environment

A story can be presented in several parts. Although this is often done for marketing purposes, it is also a literary device used to create specific narrative structures. Some common forms are:

Serial or Episodic Stories

Serial stories are divided into smaller episodes that form a single plot. This structure is rather uncommon in literature but is often used in television and subscription publications.

Duology, Trilogy, Tetralogy, etc.

Several individual stories may be connected through common characters, geography and history and can be perceived as a single work composed of a set of stories.

Frame Stories

A frame story can knit segmented stories together, serving as a framework for a set of shorter stories.

Extradiegetic Narrative

An extradiegetic narrative is a story that frames the primary story.

Frame Narrative

A frame narrative is a story within a story. In stories such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, different individuals narrate the events of a story in each frame. Unlike an omniscient narrative, the teller is an actual character with particular traits, prejudices, and motives. This structure can also resemble the psychoanalytic process of uncovering the unconscious behind various obfuscating narratives the conscious mind puts in place.

The following terms are commonly used to identify different types of split stories:

Sequel: a story set in the same fictional universe but later in time. It usually continues the original storyline.

Prequel: a story set in the same universe as a previous story. It is provided to explain the original story context.

Interquel: a story set chronologically between two previous stories.

Midquel: a story set in the same time and universe as a previous story. In episodic media such as TV series and serialized publications, stories are composed of episodes, short segments of a main story connected to a story arc, a frame narrative or a side story.

Filler: an episode that has no connection to the ongoing storylines. Fillers provide background information about the characters or present the backstory.

Temporal Order

Fabula refers to the chronological sequence of events in a narrative. Simple narratives follow the chronology of history, but this is not always the most effective way to present events when the narrator wants to provoke a strong emotional response through suspense. For example, you can create anticipation by presenting certain events in reverse order.

A couple of ways for changing the fabula of a story are:

Analepsis (flashback) presents events previous to the current time frame.

Prolepsis (flash-forward) presents events that will occur in the future. A classic example of prolepsis is prophecy.

In medias res refers to a story that begins 'in the middle of things' rather than at the chronological origin of the story. This reordering of events immediately engages the reader in the story's action.