What is narrative?
(And why am I so confused?)
Don’t worry — you’re not alone!
“Narrative” has become a buzzword has been coopted by different industries and disciplines, and as a result it’s being used differently by different people (which is why you’ve been confused). It’s also used interchangeably with “story”, which just increases confusion.
It’s not very helpful to try to choose a single definition; it’s more useful to understand the ways that the term is being used by others. The four meanings below are currently in wide use.
If you’re interested in how we got here — learn more on The Narrative Home.
Narrative: A type of text
This is the original meaning, dating back to around 1450, and is used to describe a type of text that tells a story: it has a beginning, middle and end, characters, setting etc (you know the drill). In this use, you could use “narrative” to differentiate between a book that tells the story of the restaurant The French Laundry and a book that contains recipes from the chef.
This use — describing a type of text — also uses “story” interchangeably: describing a text as a “narrative” or a “story” means the same thing. It would be more helpful if “narrative text” was used in this context, rather than just “narrative”, but as the original use was always describing a type of text it makes sense that this use doesn’t add “text” to clarify.
Narrative: Something we do
This use refers to a way of thinking common to all humans: a cognitive process also called “narrative cognition” or “narrative thinking”. It refers to the way we process information in order to make a decision, especially under complex conditions, and is why people say “we think in narrative” or “we think in stories”. In this case, a story is the result — or product — of narrative — a cognitive process.
Narrative: A point of view
This use could be replaced with “point of view” to avoid a lot of confusion, and is mostly used within Media & Communications to distinguish different points of view on an issue or event. This use has becoming more popular as we see increasing distance between reports on the same event by different media publications: their “narrative” (or point of view) explains how the same event could be described vastly differently. Increasing social division has made this concept more relevant, in particular in relation to texts published by political groups.
Another way to describe this would be to say “the story, as narrated by the media” to draw attention to the different narrator in each version of a story. However, it’s usually just said as “the media narrative”.
Narrative: A belief system
This use could be replaced with “belief system” or “worldview”, and is mostly used by nonprofit or social change organizations conducting persuasion. This use is typically referring to personal (or shared) beliefs that influence a personal (or shared) point of view, and “narrative change” is an area of work that has emerged within social change organizations.