Todorov's Narrative Theory (Narrative Research 1)

Basic Understanding of Todorov's "Narrative theory"

Todorov's Narrative theory has a massive part to play in all films, all though with the genre of thriller, aspects can differ very much from this traditional way of telling a story.

The theory highlights the way we 'traditionally' should tell a story. Todorov's view is that all stories have a start - "Equilibrium" where every thing is happy and all is well - a middle - "Disequilibrium" where things begin to change and something has happened that has caused a problem; the world is in a different state - and a end - "New equilibrium" where something has been done about the problem and the world has returned to the way it was or it has changed for the better.

Due to the conventions of thriller films the theory is not totally suited to how Narrative works in a typical thriller film. Some simple confliction can be found. This basic theory of Narrative would still be used but in a more mixed up way.

The aspects of Todorov's Narrative theory that aren't followed by the thriller genre will be explained in future studies of thriller films.