Terminology
What does “narrative” actually mean, anyway?
Most people use “narrative” and “story” interchangeably — everyone knows what a story is, and many people use “narrative” to describe a story. However, on this website the process of creating a story is distinct from the end result of the story itself — whether it’s a story in a book or in your mind. “Narrative” describes the entire practice and use of mental simulation, and “story” describes the end product.
Communication
Embodied simulation
Narrative affect
Narrative effect
Narrative text
Organizational communications
Simulation learning
Narrative
Story
Story-Experience*
Strategic storytelling
Text
Impact storytelling
Literary
Mental simulation
Narration
The process of organizing information so that it is more useful, and communicates a point of view. Narration produces a text, sometimes called a “narrative text”.
The practice - and use — of mental simulation. (Doing it, and what you do it for.)
A story is the same as a “narrative text”. A collection of information that has been organized into a format that makes it more useful.
A story designed to created to generate an audience effect of embodied simulation.
A story designed to generate an audience effect of simulated learning.
Telling stories that are produced to achieve an audience effect objective. All organizational storytelling is strategic storytelling; all strategic storytelling is not organizational storytelling.
Something that holds information. A text can be a book, a podcast episode, a poem.
* Terms that I have invented.
Organizational storytelling about the impact of an organization’s work on individual people or a social issue.
Creates an emotional affect, narrative affect, emobodied simulation.
The ability to imagine something in your mind. Essentially, it’s imagining.
Sending information.
You know that feeling when you’re completely “in” a book and you feel what’s happening as though it’s happening to you? That’s “embodied simulation”. It’s a term introduced in cognitive science and is also used by people studying the effects of narrative and reading literature.
Organizational communications that includes storytelling.
The feeling experienced from hearing a story, such as sadness or joy.
The change observed in the reader as a result of a story, such as adopting a new behavior or new perspective on life.
A text that is the product of narration. (A text that contains information, that has been organized to be more useful.) Also - a story.
The work of shifting public opinion on a social issue.
An area of organizational communications that produces stories about people, narrated and published by the organization, in service to the organization. All organizational storytelling is strategic storytelling.
Communications produced and distributed on behalf of an organization and its spokespeople.
Also “corporate communications” or simply “comms”.
“Simulation learning” is how we choose what to do when we don’t have useful information to guide us — and we naturally do it from a young age. Let’s say a child is walking along a path and comes across a section that has been washed out by a stream. What to do? There is a log bridging the path, but the stream is running rapidly. They might imagine what would happen if they walked over the log, or if they tried to walk through the stream — and choose the option that had the better outcome in their imagination. That’s simulation learning — learning by imagining what would happen.