Story and Plot
Oct. 8th, 2006 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI went and read handouts some more, starting with the one on Narratology, which is the key points from the chapter I can't read until amazon gives me the book.
starts with:
What is the difference between 'story' and 'plot'?
"The 'story' is the actual sequence of events as they happen, whereas the 'plot' is those events as they are edited, ordered, packaged and presented in what we recognise as a narrative..."
Different groups and individuals prefer different terminology:
fabula (story) and sjuzhet (plot)
histoire (story) and recit (plot)
/quote
They use the different words, but in my limited reading they use them to mean ever so slightly different things. Which is admittedly more useful than using the same words to mean rather different things, which is what the second handout seems to do.
Quoting from Aspects of the Novel by Forster again:
"We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. 'The king died and then the queen died' is a story. 'The king died and then the queen died of grief' is a plot. The time-sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it. Or again, 'The queen died, no one knew why, until it was discovered it was through grief at the death of the king.' This is a plot with a mystery in it, a form capable of high development. It suspends the time-sequence, it moves as far away from teh story as its limitations will allow. Consider the death of the queen. If it is in a story, we say, 'and then?' If it is in a plot we ask 'why?'"
The emphasis is mine.
So in the first handout
story = events as happened, in sequence
plot = events as told, not necessarily in sequence
but in the other one
story = what
plot = why
sort of added on top of the first version.
I think.
Useful distinction, because the same story can have a bazillion different plots even by the first version, and even more with different whys.
and that add a mystery bit is handy, because then the audience wants to know why. if the reader already knows why, they would be reading to see how other characters react. if they don't know why, they get to see the reactions and figure out the why as well. more layers of work to do, more interestings.
So I was thinking that fanfic maybe happens when episodes give us the story but not the why-plot?
Or maybe that we have a why-plot but not a story to go with it?
Elsewhere on that handout it says
"Neither Sophocles nor Shakespeare told original stories."
and
"not till the eighteenth century novel did stories become compulsorily 'novel', original, new. Until then, narrations were often basically variations on themes."
which is interesting.
but then the photocopy cuts off and I don't have the book it is from.
There was another handout all about narrators, but the main new bit I got from that was a new word for the point of view character, that being 'focalizer'. I think it is that the narrator is the one doing the telling and the focalizer is the one doing the seeing (experiencing etc). We follow the focalizer around, but the bits that aren't in "speech" aren't necessarily in the pov character's voice, they could be in a different narrator voice.
I think.
I think I need to go do something else, even if this is all very interesting. I don't want to try and eat the whole course at once, or I won't get much out of it before it falls out again.
starts with:
What is the difference between 'story' and 'plot'?
"The 'story' is the actual sequence of events as they happen, whereas the 'plot' is those events as they are edited, ordered, packaged and presented in what we recognise as a narrative..."
Different groups and individuals prefer different terminology:
fabula (story) and sjuzhet (plot)
histoire (story) and recit (plot)
/quote
They use the different words, but in my limited reading they use them to mean ever so slightly different things. Which is admittedly more useful than using the same words to mean rather different things, which is what the second handout seems to do.
Quoting from Aspects of the Novel by Forster again:
"We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. 'The king died and then the queen died' is a story. 'The king died and then the queen died of grief' is a plot. The time-sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it. Or again, 'The queen died, no one knew why, until it was discovered it was through grief at the death of the king.' This is a plot with a mystery in it, a form capable of high development. It suspends the time-sequence, it moves as far away from teh story as its limitations will allow. Consider the death of the queen. If it is in a story, we say, 'and then?' If it is in a plot we ask 'why?'"
The emphasis is mine.
So in the first handout
story = events as happened, in sequence
plot = events as told, not necessarily in sequence
but in the other one
story = what
plot = why
sort of added on top of the first version.
I think.
Useful distinction, because the same story can have a bazillion different plots even by the first version, and even more with different whys.
and that add a mystery bit is handy, because then the audience wants to know why. if the reader already knows why, they would be reading to see how other characters react. if they don't know why, they get to see the reactions and figure out the why as well. more layers of work to do, more interestings.
So I was thinking that fanfic maybe happens when episodes give us the story but not the why-plot?
Or maybe that we have a why-plot but not a story to go with it?
Elsewhere on that handout it says
"Neither Sophocles nor Shakespeare told original stories."
and
"not till the eighteenth century novel did stories become compulsorily 'novel', original, new. Until then, narrations were often basically variations on themes."
which is interesting.
but then the photocopy cuts off and I don't have the book it is from.
There was another handout all about narrators, but the main new bit I got from that was a new word for the point of view character, that being 'focalizer'. I think it is that the narrator is the one doing the telling and the focalizer is the one doing the seeing (experiencing etc). We follow the focalizer around, but the bits that aren't in "speech" aren't necessarily in the pov character's voice, they could be in a different narrator voice.
I think.
I think I need to go do something else, even if this is all very interesting. I don't want to try and eat the whole course at once, or I won't get much out of it before it falls out again.
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Date: 2006-10-09 05:45 pm (UTC)Fabula and Sjuzet are the chronological sequence of events vs. their representation by the author (regardless of type of manipulation, if any). If the representation is neutral chronological form in simple prose, the two would end up the same. (Note that sjuzet also includes the text manipulations, such as metaphors.) The emphasis on causality is only one aspect (albeit a common one) that can be highlighted by the author's choice of representation.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-10 07:04 pm (UTC)clarity, yaay :-)
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Date: 2006-10-10 08:22 pm (UTC)