every narrative combines two dimensions in various proportions, one chronological and the other non-chronological. the first may be called the episodic dimension, which characterize the story as made out of events. The second is the configurational dimension, according to which the plot construes significant wholes out of scattered events. Here I am borrowing from Louis O. Mink the notion of a configurational act, which he interprets as a grasping together .I understand this act to be the act of the plot, as eliciting a pattern from a succession.
paul ricoeur, narrative time.