What is Visual Narrative?
- A visual narrative (also visual storytelling) is a story told primarily through the use of visual media. Distinguishing characteristics of the visual narrative include:
The Art of Storytelling
Storytelling is about presenting a series of events as words, images and sounds that are of such interest and novelty to an audience that they become fully engaged in the presentation. Stories teach and entertain.
- The character’s world
- Conflict
- Characters
- Plot
- Audience Appeal
Two Types of Storytelling Devices
- Narrative Devices
- Cinematic Devices
How do you tell a story? Not how do you construct a story, or how do you structure and plot a story. How do you actually tell a story?
When I think about storytelling at its most basic, I think about our earliest ancestors, sitting around a campfire, sharing stories about their lives, the adventures they’ve been part of, and the history of their people.
Narrative devices are about how you tell the story, and if you’re a writer, the method and perspective of your storytelling is something you must consider.
In this article, we’re going to talk about narrative devices, what they are, the different types found in the best books, plays, films, and serials, and how to use them to tell a powerful story.
Check out 5 Storytelling Techniques ppt here.
For the sake of our lecture, we will only concentrate on two commonly used narrative devices:
- Perspective
- Subplot
Perspective
A first-person narrative is a story from the First-Person Perspective: the viewpoint of a character writing or speaking directly about themselves.
The second–person narrative is a narrative mode in which the protagonist or another main character is referred to by Second-Person personal pronouns and other kinds of addressing forms, for example the English second–person pronoun “you.“
Many stories, especially in literature, alternate between the third person limited and third person omniscient. In this case, an author will move back and forth between a more omniscient third-person narrator to a more personal third-person limited narrator. This is often called Multiple-Person Perspective
Subplot
In fiction, a subplot is a secondary strand of the plot that is a supporting side story for any story or the main plot. Subplots may connect to main plots, in either time and place or in thematic significance.
Subplots are good for character development or establishing a background on the main plot.
Cinematic devices are the same as Narrative devices but vary from the point that these are more commonly used in film than in literature.
For our lecture, we will only focus on the following cinematic devices:
- Montage
- Flashbacks
- Foreshadowing
Download the Course Pack for Storytelling here.