Inclusive Screenwriting for Film and Television

4Changing the Narrative (Structure)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003170310-6

Narrative structure is the organizational logic that shapes our emotional and intellectual experience of a screen story by providing a guide for how to arrange the narrative elements. In contrast to narrative elements like character, story world, and conflict—all of which are more readily recognized as potentially subjective because they draw more closely on a writer’s personal experience for their creation—there is a tendency to see narrative structure as neutral and a non-factor in determining a story’s meaning. As Field writes, “[t]he paradigm is a form, not a formula; it’s what holds the story together. It is the spine, the skeleton. Story determines structure; structure ...