Gonna be the first brainlet here to fess up and admit I did not understand a good 60% of what you just wrote.

i do think you could essentially reduce a narrative down to "any sequence of events" told with the purpose of relaying some kind of ontological experience—or hell, even just one event, like in that famous six-word story:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

only one event is described in this story—and if you've never seen it before, yes, that's the entire story—and the idea is that other events can be inferred from the terse descriptions, but not necessarily; it's all up to the reader

I don't think this constitutes a reduction of the narrative down to an event. Narratologically the sentence doesn't qualify; the content of whatever the reader infers may constitute a narrative, but this is a different object to the sentence.

is it the lack of telos? the problem with this is that, if you were to be a nihilist, then all of teleology is a myth anyway; so you could argue that there's no point to any story beyond that which you can infer for yourself

This doesn't seem particularly pertinent to me. A narrative can have a self-contained teleological orientation without any affirmation of some metaphysical telos. All this would entail is that there is some mythopoeic element to narrativity (depending on how expansively you want to define myth)--if we think a telos is necessary--and that's a bullet I'd probably be willing to bite. Some literary theorists (viz. Hayden White) and philosophers (Ricoeur) are more than happy to concede that in representation the use of narratives adds something that isn't contained in a mere sequential account of events, or a chronicle, and I think we can think about this broadly as a process of fictionalisation. And, I mean, some people bite like Dennett bite this bullet completely when it comes to personal identity, affirming both the narrative account and its fictional status.

So I don't really see the bite of this concern when it comes to narrative structure. And, sure, we're perspectivally trapped when it comes to matters of interpretation; there are still better and worse ways of reading Shakespeare that arise from the form and content of the text. You could even say that about your one-sentence (hind-)narrative, that there is some normative force behind the fact that the form of the sentence is clearly trying to get you to engage imaginatively, such that engaging with it imaginatively constitutes a more 'faithful' interpretation of the 'narrative'--at least at the level of the reader's comportment.

the other items you proposed, again, just kinda seem like personal preferences to me—you would naturally prefer that a story possess these qualities, as i would, because it makes them more entertaining, cohesive, or immediately meaningful, but given the subjective nature of these—what resonates with you may not resonate with me—i'm not so quick to co-opt those suggestions

I think they're all deeply problematic. Just less problematic than the equivalence of narratives with mere sequences or singular events. And these problems take on an ethical actuality if we think they have relevance for matters of personal identity, as I do.

EDIT: There is something interesting about your 'narrative' however, namely the diachronicity implied by the word "never". It intimates the reader into thinking both backwards and forwards, such that a sequence of events can be envisioned that have meaning in relation to one another. I wouldn't call it a narrative, however, but would certainly concede that it leads one to easily infer a narrative. But the interesting thing about this is that it points to a possible condition of narrative structure beyond mere sequence: a diachronically-extended set of events, the meanings of which are understood in relation to the whole, and vice versa.

Quote from: MetaCognition on May 26, 2020, 09:20:18 PM

This doesn't seem particularly pertinent to me. A narrative can have a self-contained teleological orientation without any affirmation of some metaphysical telos. All this would entail is that there is some mythopoeic element to narrativity (depending on how expansively you want to define myth)--if we think a telos is necessary--and that's a bullet I'd probably be willing to bite.

okay, so before i respond properly, do you have a specific example in mind?

An example of what, exactly?

]a story with this "self-contained teleological orientation" that you described—an element that is innate to the story, and is not merely inferred—such that its removal would cede its narrative status by reducing it to a mere sequence of events

I'm not convinced that a telos is the relevant criterion for determining narrative status. At the very least, to think narratives are monadically teleological, in that just adding a telos to a mere sequence produces a narrative, is reductive. Many narratives are teleological, in that they are prospective with some core normative orientation ('redemption'), and this is particularly relevant in identity accounts ('the good life').

But I don't think the rescission of a telos makes something not a narrative; I don't think Dostoevsky's polyphonic novels are teleological, nor Capote's In Cold Blood, but I would consider them both narrative works.

If you're asking me what I think makes a narrative? I'm not entirely sure. I'd probably say something like the syntagmatic coherence of a representation of a set of events, where the representation (the narrative) is constituted by a structure of diachronic (fictive) emplotment which renders heterogenous agents, events and objects intelligible in the context of the whole.

Quote from: MetaCognition on May 27, 2020, 12:34:31 AM

If you're asking me what I think makes a narrative? I'm not entirely sure. I'd probably say something like the syntagmatic coherence of a representation of a set of events, where the representation (the narrative) is constituted by a structure of diachronic (fictive) emplotment which renders heterogenous agents, events and objects intelligible in the context of the whole.

and the six-word example doesn't fit this framework?

you have a representation of a set of events which syntactically cohere—there are baby shoes for sale (1), and they have never been worn (2); you've already conceded the diachronic nature of these events, so i won't go over that

as for "heterogeneous agents," you have the seller of the shoes (which also serve as an object, including the sign/placard/whatever the text is clearly intradiegetically written on), the baby that they would've belonged to, and (most nebulously) the people to whom the shoes are being offered—these agents are vague, sure, but not unintelligible

am i forgetting something?

My point is that these are not present in the text itself. Narrative is textual; we may engage hermeneutically in a narrative-like way with given pieces of text, but I don't think this makes the text itself narrative.

Perhaps I am just clutching, though; if it properly fits my criteria, then yes, it's a narrative.

It’s like attorneys in a court case
Each are asserting competing narratives
Draw attention to and emphasize the facts, ideas, questions, timeline, etc that promote the validity of your story.
Ignore and downplay those that contradict or conflict with the story you’re promoting.