Lesson 37: Using narrative structure to make thought sequences more comprehensible & compelling

All about narrative structure

Although I have argued that character, rather than plot, is the heart of story, I don’t want you to imagine that plot is therefore unimportant. Quite the contrary. Although you can have a story without a plot, most popular stories do have plots, and for very good reason.

Our brains are wired to process information in a certain way. That way is primarily social and causal. As soon as we can talk, we want people to present information to us in a social, causal “format.” And we want to present our own information back to them in that format too.

We are very good at processing specific events involving concrete characters in a clear sequence.

Conversely, we’re really bad at processing vague ideas, abstract concepts or relationships, and unordered sets of things.

In other words, we assimilate and remember facts when they are presented in the format of:

• Characters involved in events — that is, actors performing actions, whether they are people or animals or tank engines or even much less anthropomorphized objects, as you’ll soon see;

• Events resulting from and leading to other events — creating a logical sequence we can understand. In other words, following a plot.

Together, this use of character and sequence — or plot — is what I call narrative structure.

Narrative structure does not mean simply telling stories. While you obviously can and should tell stories in your copy when appropriate, narrative structure can be applied to any copy whatsoever, regardless of whether it involves a story or not.

In other words, it is a meta-structure. We can abstract the structure of a narrative into a general sequence which any copy can imitate.

Features of narrative structure

As I’ve said, there are two broadly independent features of narrative structure — plot and actors. These work very well together, but are best explained separately. Let’s start with plot.