Metaphorically, a lot of people speak of narratives as building structures and as journeys. A lot of people emphasize the building part. I prefer to emphasize the journey.
metaphorical background
Lakoff and Johnson» describe three different metaphorical understandings of arguments (what I call "narrative"). Two of them are so close that I'll ignore one. The two remaining are these:
`A Narrative Is a Building`:
* That argument is without *foundation*. * The more claims he *piles on*, the *shakier* his argument becomes. * There are *holes* in his argument you could *drive a truck through*.
`A Narrative Is a Journey`:
* This *chapter* wanders all over the place. * You've *lost me*; can you *retrace those steps*? * You're *going in circles*.
consequences
The building metaphor emphasizes the *mental structure* that the argument constructs: it needs to be sound, complete, sturdy, etc. It needs to *hang together*.
The journey metaphor emphasizes that, to the reader, an argument is perceived as a *sequence of mental events*.
People who tend toward Structuralism tend to emphasize the result of the journey – the structure – and pay less attention to the journey.
Writers of technical nonfiction overwhelmingly have structuralist aims: focused on the ends, not the means.
That can produce a lot of dull narratives that don't get read because the *payoff* of reading them comes at the end – that payoff is (implicitly) treated as motivation enough.
The motivation is the responsibility of the reader.
The journey metaphor makes motivation the responsibility of the writer, who needs to provide a sequence of mental events that encourages the reader to continue on.
see also
This approach to narrative will be (eventually) more fleshed out here:
This is a wiki devoted to One Associationist Theory of Thought, extended to How Conversation Works, What Happens During Monologue, and consequently What Happens While Drafting Text.
A typical consequence of a structuralist approach is the Boxcar Narrative.
It occurs to me that "journey-centric" narratives will be particularly responsive to Reader-Response Criticism.
Joint Coherence has more explanation of different metaphors for argument/narrative, though the actual topic (joint coherence) is not, I think, all that useful.
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