Crime Story

Narrative Task

Different Narrative TypesAs part of my experimentation of narrative, I will be attempting to take a chronological story and change it into an Anachronic story, a Forking-Path story, and an Episodic story.

An Anachronic story is a narrative which makes the use of flashbacks and/or flashforwards. There is no clear dominance between any of the narrative threads, and these narratives will also repeat scenes directly or via a different perspective.

A Forking-Path narrative juxtaposes alternative versions of the story, showing varying possible outcomes. These outcomes can come from a change in a single event, or a group of events.

An Episodic narrative is organised as an abstract series or narrative anthology. Abstract series narrative is characterised by the operation of a non-formal system which appears to dictate the order of the events.An Anthology narrative consists of a series of shorter tales which are apparently dissconected but share a random similarity.

Anachronic Narrative

For this narrative I have started with the crime being investigated, from here the crime is then solved and the culprit is convicted. We then have a flashback to what the crime was before ending with the crime being discovered.

Forking-Path Narrative

For the Forking-Path narrative I have kept the same 3 scenes as in the linear story, however from this point changed in the third scene could alter the outcome. The inspector may not find any concluding evidence, and so the culprit is never caught. Just as the culprit could still be discovered, but may escape. The story could also change from scene two as the passer-by may not report the murder, or may not even discover it.

These two scenes aren’t included in the main storyline as the outcome could change.

Episodic Narrative

For this narrative I started with the court scene and focused on the passerby. It then goes to tell the story of how they found the body, told the police and ended up as a witness in court.

I left out the scene showing the actual murder as this narrative focused on a different character.