Glossary
Narrative Level
Every character in a film inhabits one or more narrative levels. The classical distinction between the diegetic mode and the mimetic mode relate to the difference stories told by external narraters or a voice over or a drama where actors speak and act out the story with no external narrative. A narrator that is reporting the story from the external plane (metadiegetic) can also inhabit the story (homodiegetic) on the diagetic plane and even jump back and forth between these two separate story levels. The narrator can also be an invisible presenter (heterodiegetic) of the story and not apear in the action. This narrator can be omniscient, know all, or representative of the viewer, knowing only that which has been dramatized. Diegetic is a analytical term used in narrative theory. It links the attention of the circumstances and what lies within or outside accepted or observed conventions of storytelling.