anti-narrative
Rejecting traditional plots
Anti-narrative describes or rejects the conventions of traditional storytelling—linear plot, coherent characters, cause-and-effect structure.
An anti-narrative film might abandon chronology or withhold resolution.
The term applies to works that deliberately frustrate narrative expectations: The novel's anti-narrative structure left readers disoriented.
It can also describe a stance against dominant cultural stories: an anti-narrative approach to history that questions received accounts.
Breaking into smaller pieces
- nonlinearNot in sequence
- experimentalTesting new methods
- postmodernSkeptical of metanarratives
- deconstructionAnalysis exposing self-contradiction
discontinuity · collage · montage · disruption · metafiction · stream-of-consciousness · plotless · episodic
- jump cutAbrupt splice between shots
- nonlinearNot in sequence
- disjointedLacking orderly sequence
- experimental filmUnconventional artistic motion picture
avant-garde · plotless · tableau · meandering · mood piece · atmospheric · formalist · anticlimactic
Philosophy questioning stable meaning
- incredulityInability to accept something
- DerridaGrammatology's French author
- FoucaultProminent French family name
- discourseFormal communication on subjects
hegemony · deconstruction · critique · ideology · totalizing · skepticism · relativism · contingency
Capacity to withstand force
- subversionUndermining established authority
- marginalized voicesSpeakers from excluded communities
- alternative historyGenre reimagining past events
- oral traditionCulture passed by speech
subaltern · decolonial · revisionist · grassroots · untold stories · silenced · plurality · decentralized
fragmentation
Breaking into smaller pieces
- nonlinearNot in sequence
- experimentalTesting new methods
- postmodernSkeptical of metanarratives
deconstruction · discontinuity · collage · montage · disruption · metafiction · stream-of-consciousness · plotless · episodic · vignette
Godard
- jump cutAbrupt splice between shots
- nonlinearNot in sequence
- disjointedLacking orderly sequence
experimental film · avant-garde · plotless · tableau · meandering · mood piece · atmospheric · formalist · anticlimactic · elliptical
poststructuralism
Philosophy questioning stable meaning
- incredulityInability to accept something
- DerridaGrammatology's French author
- FoucaultProminent French family name
discourse · hegemony · deconstruction · critique · ideology · totalizing · skepticism · relativism · contingency · plurality
resistance
Capacity to withstand force
- subversionUndermining established authority
- marginalized voicesSpeakers from excluded communities
- alternative historyGenre reimagining past events
oral tradition · subaltern · decolonial · revisionist · grassroots · untold stories · silenced · plurality · decentralized · collective memory
- experimental poetryfound poetry, fragmentation, parataxis, discontinuity
- narrative techniquesflashback, nonlinear plot, flash-forward, point of view, first person
- postmodernismdeconstruction, metafiction, hyperreality, pastiche, simulacra
anti-narrativenarrative
Account of events
story · linear narrative · plot-driven · three-act structure · traditional narrative
anti-narrativegenre fiction
Conventional, plot-driven popular books
formulaic storytelling · page-turner · realist novel · crowd-pleaser · potboiler
anti, narrative, narrator, narrate, narration, narratives, narrated, narrating, narrators