ABSTRACT
This chapter considers narrative theory in sequential images and singular images, and how they function in visual storytelling and explores narratives in sequential images and narratives in singular images. Language-based narratives are found in novels, news articles, histories, and anywhere where words are used to recount events in a chronological order. Visual narrative theory has developed most consistently to account for comic strips and editorial cartoons. Characters in a narrative are the agents of action that propel the plot. Narrative theorists have debated the importance of character to narrative. The scene of a narrative may take on two forms, the specific and the historical. The specific scene of a narrative is the visible environment. The plot of the narrative is what separates stories from other types of information. N. Cohn’s grammar offers a different vocabulary to distinguish the static nature of some visual images from other narrative types, such as motion pictures.
