Scriptwriting- Narrative Structure

Our second lesson on screenwriting explored the topic of Narrative Structure and it's importance in a story or script, I learned about the origins of Narrative Structure and how it can be traced back to a Greek Philosopher by the name of Aristotle who noticed the importance of a plot and how they must have a beginning, a middle and an end. Of course their are also Non-Narrative plots and stories in the form of documentaries and commercials but the more common and popular structure is narrative. A great way to create a narrative structure is to give your story some pre-narrative stability by giving the setting and the characters of your story a history so they don't seem like they were instantly created, another point to making a strong narrative is making sure that the narrative gets disrupted at some point and sets off a chain of events for your characters to follow which you can end with a solution to close the narrative.

I also learned about Diegesis, which is the specific world that the story creates and inhabits by using tools like Mise en scene, characters and costumes. This helps set a tone and a history to the world your story takes place in and gives you a foundation to build on. Of course your story won't move anywhere unless you have Motivations that move the story along, these are events that occur in the narrative that function in the overall plot. The motivations need to be justified and can't just appear to be random and need to be believable in the world your narrative takes place in. These are all great guidelines to follow and consider when writing a screenplay with a narrative structure, they make sure your ideas become a story and not just random scenes and dialogue so I'll defiantly be thinking about where and when to use this information when writing a screenplay.