Barthes' name is commonly remembered with his conclusion: "the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author" According to him, all narratives share structural features that each narrative weaves together in different ways. Despite the differences between individual narratives, any narrative employs a limited number of organizational structures that affect our reading of texts. Barthes argues that we should take this plurality of codes as an invitation to read a text in such a way as to bring out its multiple meanings and connotations. Rather than read a text for its linear plot (this happens, then this, then this), rather than be constrained by either genre or even temporal progression, Barthes argues for what he terms a 'writerly' rather than a "readerly" approach to texts. According to Barthes, "the writerly test is ourselves writing, before the infinite play of the world is traversed by some singular system like ideology. This reduces the plurality of entrances, the opening of networks, the infinity of languages. This closing of the text happens as you read, as you make decisions about a work's genre and its ideological beliefs. Barthes exemplifies this in 5/2, in which he takes a short story Balzac (Sarrasine) and analyse each individual sentence for its relation to five master codes. In other words, Barthes' go is to illustrate how "plotting" (plotting) as it is traditionally understood, is in fact a retroactive construction. We usually see a text as conforming to a plot triangle (an opening exposition followed by rising action, a conflict leading to a climax, then falling action leading to a resolution).
Barthes compares narrative to a constellation. According to this logic, there is no necessity that we begin a story at the beginning and proceed to the end; a "writerly text", according to Barthes, has multiple entrances and exists. Barther's form of criticism ultimately "consists precisely in manhandling the text, interrupting it".
