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The narrative ellipsis

The narrative ellipsis is a literary resource that is used to remove information or an event that occurs in a story. This can be done for various reasons, specially when playing with time sequences, space, or information, since it is very easy to have your characters move from one place to another without having to narrate the trip they have made; as well as going from one date to another.

Using this resource, an author can prompt a reader to react in certain ways that will make him/her want to continue to read. This conscious elimination of information is supported by the theory of "less is more", in this way we do not overload the script and we avoid that the readers get tired in so much detail. The greatest part is that story's continuity is not lost.


Is the use of this resource recommended?

Yes, of course. When creating a story, not everything that is planned is added, in order to avoid overloading it with unimportant details. In addition to that, this planned "intrigue" has a very important role in the overall story. If we tell the reader everything he has to know, we would be taking away the opportunity to leave things to imagination, which can cause any reader to get bored and quit reading.


When can we use this resource?

Whenever you want as long as it is used with a purpose and without abusing of it

Some cases can be:

  • To speed up the pace of the story.
  • To avoid overloading a scene with information.
  • To intrigue the reader.
  • To avoid repeating what happened in the scenes.
  • To achieve fluidity of the story.


Written by Taty Calderón. (@iamtaty)

May 31, 2020, 6:12 p.m. 0 Report Embed 12

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