Four Narrative Modes: Description, Report, Action, Dialog

There was an excellent academic work by Helmut Bonheim called The Narrative Modes: Techniques of the Short Story (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986), which analyzed literature according to four “modes”: Description (an accounting of a static scene), Report (an account of an action, aka a dynamic scene, in the past), Action (an account of a dynamic scene happening now), and Dialog.

Bonheim goes on to show how each mode has gone in and out of favor throughout the centuries: Scott’s 1819 Ivanhoe was liberal on description about visiting another continent, which was a rarity back in 1819. But in a pre-television world, Scott’s extensive description would be a yawner.

It is the combination of these four modes where things get really interesting—if Sudowrite could have a feature where each narrative modes is highlighted differently (some of which feel faster, like Action and Dialog, instead of Description and Report), then story pacing could be fine tuned like the pacing of a symphony. Action would be Green, for instance, and Description would be Red, where Dialog and Report could be colors in-between. Then users could actually see the “speed” of reading any text. Too much red (Description)? Then change it up with something orange (Dialog), blue (Report), or better yet, green (Action).

https://archive.org/details/narrativemodeste0000bonh/page/n215/mode/2up