The period of time that the discourse lasts, that is, the time it takes the narrator to "tell" or "show" the story. Thus, a three page short story has a discourse time that is one third as long as that of a nine page story, even though the story time of the first may be longer than that of the second. In written narratives, discourse-time can only be estimated; in film, discourse-time is more precise (it is the running time of the film).