Equilibrium (Todorov) – The stage of a narrative in which everything is at peace and characters haven’t faced any kind of disruption.

Binary Opposites (Levi-Strauss) – Narratives contain opposing main characters (e.g. good/evil, comedic/serious etc)

Character Types (Propp) – seven main characters exist in a narrative, those being:

• the villain.
• the donor (provider)
• the helper.
• the princess
• the dispatcher.
• the hero or victim.
• the false hero.

Hero’s Journey (Vogler/Campbell) – narratives involve a structure consisting of several stages (such as call to adventure, transformation, return)

Narrative Codes (Barthes) – “all narratives share structural features that each narrative weaves together in different ways” :

Hermeneutic Codes – When a writer deliberately withholds information from the audience to leave a plot point unexplained

Proairetic codes – plot points which are caused by previous events and lead to other actions.

Semantic Codes – Rather than simply working on a denotational level, signs carried connotations beyond their basic definition and gave the reader a little more insight to the characters, setting and plot.

Symbolic Codes –  thematic or structural devices.

Cultural Codes – Many stories allude to concepts and ideas that exist outside the text. In order for these signifiers to be decoded fully by the audience, that information needs to be part of our framework of knowledge.