Narrative Comprehension and Film

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FICTION

FICTION AS PARTIALLY DETERMINED REFERENCE

Narrative and fiction are quite different things even if they often appear together in public. Narrative involves such processes as creating a scene of action, defining a temporal progression, and dramatizing an observer of events. Narrative is a particular way of assembling and understanding information that is best contrasted to a nonnarrative way of assembling information. Nonnarratives may be found in classifications, inventories, indexes, diagrams, dictionaries, recipes, medical statements, conference papers, job descriptions, legal contracts, and in many other places.

By contrast, “fiction,” and its opposite “nonfiction,” involve a quite different question, namely, how can the data that ...