Within music videos there is usually a story being told, this story telling is known as narrative. narrative is a series of actions in a cause & effect chain (where someone does an action that leads to another action) occuring in time and space (location).
If a music video was to succeed with its verisimilitude (realism for audience to engage) the story must follow the rules of continuity, temporal and spacial coherence. This means the diegesis must be realistic and for the video to consist of linear narrative so thats its easier for the audience to understand and engage with the song.
There are many different types of narrative structures which are used in music videos depending on the song and genre of music; these include:
Multi-strand narrative - there is more than one story going on in the video.
Closed narrative - everything ties up in the video/song, no lasting questions.
Open narrative - leaves questions at the end.
Interactive narrative - interact with audience/public. These are mainly used on tv programmes.
Point of view narrative - the audience find out information as the character does throughout the music video
