Narrative

A Narrative is a Literate Model that selects, orders, and explains a Story according to a particular viewpoint, Purpose, and Context, organizing concrete situations and the meaning of change in a comprehensible form. It supports inductive understanding and sharing of the meaning of requirements, decisions, and Behavior between people and generative AI.

Narrative is used broadly in literature, business, medicine, and other fields. SimpleModeling limits the term to an expression that has a subject, Purpose, meaning, and identity as a Literate Model and corresponds to design, decisions, or validation. The ordinary Japanese word 物語 is not automatically associated with this term.

A Narrative functions as an inductive Model that derives meaning and patterns from concrete situations, events, and outcomes. A formal Model functions deductively by evaluating particular Behavior against generalized structures and rules. SimpleModeling uses the two as complements rather than opposites.

A Use Case Scenario is a representative Literate Model and a Narrative that organizes one Story for achieving an Actor’s Goal from the user’s perspective. Narratives are not limited to Use Case Scenarios; they may also include decision histories, failure cases, usage situations, and change histories.

Japanese articles and videos introduce the term as ナラティブ(narrative) and subsequently use ナラティブ. When distinguishing it from Story, they explain that a Story is the semantic content of what happens and a Narrative is the Literate Model that organizes it from a viewpoint, Purpose, and Context.