Song is to music what a story is to narrative. Music is an assortment of elements relating to sound: rhythm, tempo, dynamics, harmony, tone, texture, time, and a song is a particular arrangement of these elements according to constraints. A pop song is different from a dance mix, a piece of jazz is different from a symphony. These genres differ in how these elements are constrained; that is, how they are held back, reinforced, shaped, formed, etc. All forms of creative work exist as a combination of elements constrained according to fashion, style, or genre.
    The same is true with narrative and story.  While music is sound configured to, and arranged by constraints. Those configurations might have aesthetic or sensual values, or they might be meaningful in some other way. Narrative, for our sake, we’ll refer to in this class as “A chronicle of Change.” This is my definition and it suits the cross pollinating reality of teaching students engaged in multiple variations of creative work. Note that word “chronicle” begins with the root, “chronos” which refers to sequential time. A chronicle is an index of events over time.
    Narrative (like music) is merely a set of possibilities.  The raw material of event, space, time, entity, and observer: a chronological index of events. More precisely these elements concede to plot, setting, time, character, point of view, voice, tone, style, etc.  A story is a genre of narrative. In this class, we’re focusing on a literary form known as the short story, which is short, but, as all great art attests, much bigger than the sum of its parts.