NARRATIVE
‘A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.’
Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, p. 23′
When I studied Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT we studied, ‘The hero with a thousand faces’ by Joseph Campbell. It covered the archetypal journey of the hero or causality: protagonist’s call to action, overcoming obstacles to a final resolution – a classic three act structure that you see in nearly every Hollywood movie (you can view a summary of the archetype structure in my Other Readings file blog).
And read by every aspiring screenwriter of course is the eponymous Robert McKee – ‘Everything is story, story is everything’.
Yes, narrative is everywhere. Even people not normally associated with discussing it like the renowned neurologist, Oliver Sacks. ‘Humans naturally create stories and narratives’. (http://bigthink.com/videos/oliver-sacks-on-humans-and-myth-making). This echoes what Adrian Miles was addressing his lecture that ‘humans are the only animals that create story’ (Ah, if only we could understand ‘whale’).
TASK
As activity, in pairs we were to map out a story of a well-known movie or story.
- Think of a story both know
- Map the story according to emotional highs/lows
- Map the story according to character prominence.
Lion King
| Out of 5 | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 |
| Simba | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Nala | 2 | 4 | 3 |
| Scar | 3 | 2 | 4 |
| Side kicks | 3 | 3 |
Non-narrative
Whenever I hear this term ‘non-narrative’ I can’t but help think of some tedious French film where two lovers are sitting at a distressed wooden kitchen table, and with long faces are shoving plates of camembert at each other in between interminably long pauses and then, after two hours the credits roll. Or instead watch Andy Warhol’s Empire State Building to get the same feeling.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Andy+Warhol+made+a+film+called+Empire+in+1964+
Yes, not a lot happens and often non-narrative is typified by bucking the conventions of narrative ie there maybe a hero, they may not overcome obstacles, there maybe no end and they maybe even on hero.Even so, so-called non-narrative forms do use elements. As this video by Daniel Askil ‘We decided not to die’ shows.
REFLECTION
As a published writer of a travel narrative, short story and scriptwriter, I didn’t find in today’s lecture much that I didn’t already know. Still, it was, like seeing an old lover, pleasurable. Watching the video ‘We decided not to die’ despite so-called non-narrative style of it each vignette had journey of the protagonist and resolution. So still they were following the classic three act structure.