Hayden White has called narrative a metacode for making sense.
Narrative is subject to cultural, interpersonal, linguistic and cognitive variables.
We construct certain habits and relationships that make up ways of life by staying true to these internalized stories. A deconstruction of those parts of the internalized story can reveal exactly where a falsehood may be construed as a truth, simply by virtue of having been interjected to fill gaps in the natural inclination for narrative flow, to explain the unknown, or to build segues so that the story can continue to validate self-identity. Contemporary narratologists have brought to the party an emphasis on the narrative act, or the presentation of a story, as a key component of the story's meaning. This seems to speak more to a read text as opposed to an oral text. It also contributes to the validity of hypertext as having the same three basic parts of narrative described above, but with emphasis on the telling and the cognition of the story.