What is a narrative?

I think the broadest definition that can be applied to narrative is that it is a story, imagined or not, long or short, told for the purpose of entertainment or enlightenment. Is that definition too restrictive for today's more modern or technology-based creative writing?

What does a narrative need, at the very least? I think at the least, it needs to be engaging. It should have some sort of basic plot, characters, a general structure that can be followed and makes sense, perhaps even cause and effect. Poems generally aren't narratives, although they do often tell a story, and for me it is because they don't have these things.

Defining narrative within terms that accept and include things like hypertext literature is not easy because these forms of literature resist interpretation or grouping into genres-- and many of them tend to be less structured or more visual than we would consider a classic story format to contain.

A narrative doesn't have to be something independent of the reader, I don't think-- hearing a narrative doesn't have to be a passive act--and I think things like MMORPGs should count as narratives. Are they perhaps a more dynamic narrative, where the actions of the characters/readers cause the narrative to change as it is being created? I think so. The interactive nature of online materials suggests that this process should be dynamic and the word narrative alone implies a static, unchanging sort of story.

So to define online media and games in terms of narratives, I think we need to change the definition of narrative to fit within the online framework. Or, better yet, create a new framework to define this new media by.