Structures of Narrative: News stories, Magazine stories, Novels

News, magazine articles, novels…

Neo: They’re all just stories, right?

News Story Structure

Skelley: The structures are different.

Neo: Not just beginning, middle, end?

Skelley: Not at all. News stories put all the important facts at the front, magazine articles maybe start with a human interest story or a question to pique your curiosity, and novels usually build up to the important facts at the end.

Novel Structure

Neo: This is always so?

Skelley: Well, there are journalists who write magazine style, just as there are novelists who write like journalists.

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Voice-over

The inverted pyramid defines the news story structure. A triangle on a graph simplifies the timeline of a novel.

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