4.2. Sections of narratives
Different narrative genres are organized differently. For instance, oral story-telling follows fairly regular patterns. Telling real or partly ficitionalised anecdotes is a well-defined discursive activity, which is recognised as such by participants in a conversation, as they give the "floor" to the story-teller and listen respectfully to his or her contribution.[1] The ordinary rhythm of turn-taking is interrupted and the participants adhere to another set of discursive conventions. The story-teller usually follows principles of relevance, economy and tellability while he is holding his audience's attention. The action itself must be generally tellable and/or relevant to the conversational topic, and the criteria of unity, novelty, surprise, plot construction and characterization are as relevant as in literature. The narrative itself is organized into different sections: an abstract which justifies the telling of the story and captures the hearers' attention, a retrospective and more detailed orientation which provides setting and the preliminaries of the action; a complicating action which leads towards the maximum point of interest, suspense, humour, etc. in the story; an evaluation or commentary on the teller's part, assessing the situation from a distance; the result or resolution of the action, which is the narrative climax; and finally a coda recapitulating the main point of the story and preparing the transition to normal turn-taking.[2]