Types of narrative (P1)

There are a range of different types of narrative that media productions will use to tell their stories.

These are:

• Circular - The story starts with the ending and then the story is told until they reach the ending again.
• Linear - Events take place in chronological order and we see them in this order.
• Episodic - Events are split up into episodes, some events will take one episode and some will take multiple.
• Non-Linear - Some events may be chronological. But generally they are out of order.

This means that the script for each will be different, a script that has a circular narrative will aim to inform the viewer of how character got into the situation that they are in at the start of the film or TV show instead of building up suspense for the situation to be a big reveal at or near the end like a linear script. An episodic script will have small events in it, with some events building up to a bigger one in a later script. They may use any of the types of narrative in order to do this. For example one episode could show the big event that previous episodes have built up to without explaining how characters got there and then spend the episode focusing on how they got there with the next episode being what happens during the big event. Combining a circular and non-liner narrative and splitting it up into episodes that will each have their own individual scripts.