Definition of Narrative Text

The concept of text narrative is equivalent to another, gender narrative. By him is meant the description of descriptive or dialogued passages in which the experiences of some characters in a given space and time are told. The narrative text can be literary, although these texts sometimes appear in press releases or other formats.

The figure of the narrator

For there to be a narrative text, there must necessarily be a narrator who tells a story. There are different types of storytellers. The resource of the third-person narrator is used when the person who tells the story is oblivious to the events of the story. A story can be presented from the omniscient narrator, who is the one who knows all the reality that he describes (the thoughts and feelings Of the characters).

The limited narrator tells something as if it were a camera of movie theaterhe, that is, he observes what happens but does not delve into the thoughts or feelings of the characters. There are also stories told in the first person, in which the narrator himself tells something from his personal experience. Another possible option is for the narrator to be a secondary character in the story and in this case we are talking about the witness narrator.

There is no narrative without characters, who are not always people, as it can be an animated object or an animal

In any case, the characters are classified into three groups: protagonists, antagonists, and secondary characters. The protagonist is the main character of the story and the reader follows the course of events through him.

The antagonist is usually a character who symbolizes the difficulties encountered by the protagonist and is usually an archetype opposite to the protagonist.

As the name suggests, the secondary characters have a scarcely relevant role in the story.

Regarding the characters, it should be noted that some maintain the same features throughout the narration and others evolve during the story.

The time in the narration

In a story, it is possible to tell events that refer to very different temporal situations, from what happens in an hour to what happens during a hundred years or more. For this reason, the narrator has the option of speeding up the pace of the narration or slowing it down.

When resorting to dialogue between the characters, the time of the narrative and the time of reality coincide. Sometimes jumps in time occur, such as jumping back or flashback.

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