Narrative formatting, chronotopic orderings, and moralization in ex‐gay stories

Abstract Formatted stories rely on spatiotemporal cues to evoke recognizability through linearity, which prescribes a particular template for meaning‐making. This article examines stories narrated by ex‐gay members of a Christian organization in Singapore and considers how chronotopes within the stories are ordered to regiment ways of feeling for viewers. By ordering these experiences differently, affective flows between each chronotope become altered and the uptake of meaning is impacted. Drawing on Bakhtinian thought and linguistic anthropological ideas in narratives, I suggest that the structuring of recognizable stories is an exercise in narrative formatting: the discursive practice of ordering and presenting experience as morally and normatively desirable.