Narrative, plot, Story: what is the difference? — The Learning Tab

It may sound strange to talk about the difference between narrative, plot, and story, but if you are a prospective writer or game designer knowing the subtleties of these terms can be very helpful. And there is a significant difference between these concepts! So, let’s talk about these definitions:

What is a plot?

A plot can be defined as a series of events related and connected in some way. You can think of a plot by imagining a simple event and then creating a paragraph by connecting this event with “because”, “for that reason”, “which lead to” and so on. For example, if I started a paragraph with “I dropped my wallet”, and immediately come up with “and for that reason I couldn’t pay for lunch”, that is a plot.

Plots are all about the causality of events

This means that they take up a lot of work to interconnect and create that cause-effect relationship in any work, be it a short novel or a character’s background in an RPG game. This also means that we can rely on common structures for creating and driving those plots. Different authors attribute a different number of universal plots, like Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots, that are present in every work of literature (that has a plot). However, researchers have identified 6 common plots that are present in a vast literature corpus and considered universal. They are:

• Tragedy — a fall from good standing to a bad one
• Rags to riches — the opposite of a tragedy: constant rise from bad standing to a good one
• Icarus — a rise followed by a fall, much like the Icarus myth
• Oedipus — a fall, a rise then another fall (like Oedipus’ story)
• Cinderella — rise, fall, rise
• Man in a hole — fall, rise

But What’s the difference between plot and story?

Simple. The story is defined as a sequence of events, without any causality implications and usually put together merely for entertainment purposes. If you think of an event and proceeds to add the term “and then”, you are creating a story. If I dropped my wallet and then a bird was passing through the skies, I’m telling a (boring) story.

To state more clearly:

The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then the queen died of grief is a plot.

E. M. Forster in Aspects of the Novel

Narrative

Last but not least, the narrative is the architecture of the whole story, presenting how the events are shown, how the story is told. Narrative designers are story architects that are constantly thinking about how to best present a certain story. Compelling stories often rely on innovative narrative structures to build readers’ expectations and break them at just the right moment.

Why does it matter?

Again, elementary my dear reader. Not all aspects of your new novel or game need a plot, but all of them need a story. This means you can always ask yourself for your new cool background for a scene, or people around the main character: do you need them to be created by a complex chain of causality, or you need them to simply be?

Not everything in a novel or game need a plot, but they all need a compelling story!

If you are an all-in-one writer, editor, and publisher or an indie game developer, you must make great use of your time. Deciding which aspects of your work need causality and explanations and which don’t can make a huge difference and speed up your next release.

Hope this little bit of insight on the difference between plot, story, and narrative can save you work down the road!

Originally published at https://thelearningtab.com on August 12, 2020.