Narrative

A narrative is a story that is created in a constructive format (as a work of speech, literature, pictures, song, motion pictures, television, video games, theatre, musical theatre, or dance) that describes a sequence of fictional or non-fictional events.
For general purposes in semiotics and literary theory, a "narrative" is a story or part of a story. It may be spoken, written or imagined, and it will have one or more points of view representing some or all of the participants or observers. In stories told orally, there is a person telling the story, a narrator whom the audience can see and/or hear, who adds layers of meaning to the text non-verbally. The narrator also has the opportunity to monitor the audience's response to the story and modify the manner of the telling to clarify content or enhance listener interest. This is distinguishable from the written form in which the author must gauge the readers' likely reactions when they are decoding the text and make a final choice of words in the hope of achieving the desired response.
Whatever the form, the content may concern real-world people and events; this is termed "personal experience narrative". When the content is fictional, different conventions apply. The text projects a narrative voice, but the narrator belongs to an invented or imaginary world, not the real one. The narrator may be one of the characters in the story. Roland Barthes describes such characters as "paper beings", and fiction comprises their narratives of personal experience as created by the author. When their thoughts are included, this is termed internal focalisation: when each character's mind focuses on a particular event, the text reflects his or her reactions.