Narrative Structure

There are a few things that make the narrative of a film or documentary's structure. Normally it is either a classic Hollywood structure or a 3 act narrative structure.

The Hollywood structure consists of:
- Exposition
- Development
- Complication
- Climax
- Resolution

The three act structure consists of:
- Equilibrium
- Disequilibrium
- New equilibrium

The narrative throughout a story is what keeps everything flowing and links things together the events. Whereas the story are the things that actually happen. The difference between story and narrative basically is that the story tells the audience what happens but the narrative strings the events together in (most of the time) a chronological order.

When a narrative structure isn't strung together in chronological order it is called a non-linear structure.
An example of this style of work is Pulp Fiction. In pulp fiction the beginning of the film ends up being the very end of the film. Each scene is rumbled up in a random order but it all gets strung together towards the end of the film.

Diagram illustrating a classic Hollywood narrative structure:

Diagram illustrating the narrative structure of Pulp Fiction (Tarantino 1995)