Narration

Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience.[1] Narration encompasses a set of
techniques through which the creator of the story presents their story, including:

Narrative point of view:[2] the perspective (or type of personal or non-personal "lens") through which a story is
communicated.
Narrative voice:[2] the format through which a story is communicated.
Narrative tense: the grammatical placement of the story's time-frame in the past, the present, or the future.
A narrator is a personal character or a non-personal voice that the creator (author) of the story develops to deliver information to
the audience, particularly about the plot. In the case of most written narratives (novels, short stories, poems, etc.), the narrator
typically functions to convey the story in its entirety. The narrator may be an anonymous, non-personal, or stand-alone entity; the
author as a character; or some other character appearing and participating within their own story, whether fictitious or factual. The
narrator is considered a participant if they are a character within the story, and a non-participant if they merely relate the story to
the audience without being involved in the plot. Usually, a non-participant narrator is either an implied character or a being or
voice with varied degrees of omniscience. Some stories have multiple narrators to illustrate the storylines of various characters at
the various times, creating a story with a complex perspective.

Narration encompasses who tells the story and how the story is told (for example, by using stream of consciousness or unreliable
narration). In traditional literary narratives (such as novels, short stories, and memoirs), narration is a required story element; in
other types of (chiefly non-literary) narratives, such as plays, television shows, video games, and films, narration is merely
optional.

Contents
Narrative point of view
First-person
Second-person
Third-person
Alternating person
Narrative voice
Stream-of-consciousness voice
Character voice
Unreliable voice
Epistolary voice
Third-person voices
Third-person, omniscient
Third-person, subjective
Third-person, objective
Third-person, free/indirect
Third-person, alternating

Narrative tense
Other types and uses
See also
Notes
 Further reading

Narrative point of view

Narrative perspective is the position and character of the storyteller, in relation to the narrative.[3] It is a point of view akin to that
from the narrator's shoulder, with access to the narrator's mind.

The Russian literary critic, Boris Uspensky, identifies five planes on which point of view is expressed in a narrative: 1) spatial, 2)
temporal, 3) psychological, 4) phraseological, and 5) ideological.[4] The American literary critic, Susan Sniader Lanser, also
develops these categories.[5] Spatial point of view is the stance in terms of space from which the narrator tells the story. The
narrator may be outside the narrative or within the story as a character. Or the narrator may be an observer that records events and
happenings similar to a roving camera and montage. Whatever the spatial stance of the narrator, it conveys a point of view to the
reader. The spatial position of the narrator may create for the reader affinity to a character's point of view, or it can have the
opposite effect of establishing distance from a character's perspective.[6] Temporal point of view refers to the distance between
the moment of writing and when the events of the narrative take place. The events may take place before, after, or during the time
of narration, which affects narrative point of view. For example, when events are narrated after they have occurred (posterior
narration), the narrator is in a privileged position to the characters in the story and can delve into the deeper significance of events
and happenings, pointing out the missteps and missed meanings of the characters. Temporal point of view also focuses on the
pace of narration. Narrative pace can either be accelerated or slowed down. Narrative retardation (slowing down of narration)
foregrounds events and suggests what is to be noticed by the reader, whereas summation or acceleration of narrative pace places
events and happenings in the background, diminishing their importance. Psychological point of view focuses on characters'
behaviors. Lanser concludes that this is "an extremely complex aspect of point of view, for it encompasses the broad question of
the narrator's distance or affinity to each character and event…represented in the text."[7] Negative comments distance the reader
from a character's point of view while positive evaluations create affinity with his or her perspective. Phraseological point of view
focuses on the speech characteristics of characters and the narrator. For example, the names, titles, epithets, and sobriquets given
to a character may evaluate a character's actions or speech and express a narrative point of view. Ideological point of view is not
only "the most basic aspect of point of view" but also the "least accessible to formalization, for its analysis relies to a degree, on
intuitive understanding."[8] This aspect of point of view focuses on the norms, values, beliefs, and Weltanschauung (worldview)
of the narrator or a character. The ideological point of view may be stated outright—what Lanser calls "explicit ideology"—or it
may be embedded at "deep-structural" levels of the text and not easily identified.[9] The Gospel of John is an example of explicit
ideology[10] while Virginia Woolf's The Waves expresses an ideological point of view that is deeply embedded in the
narrative.[11]

First-person
A first-person point of view reveals the story through a participant narrator. First person creates a close relationship between the
narrator and reader, by referring to the viewpoint character with first person pronouns like I (or we, if the narrator is part of a
larger group).[12] That is, the narrator openly acknowledges their own existence. Frequently, the first-person narrator is the
protagonist, whose inner thoughts are expressed to the audience, even if not to any of the other characters. A first person narrator
with limited omniscience is not able to witness or understand all facets of any situation. Thus, a narrator with this perspective will
not be able to report the circumstances fully and will leave the reader with a subjective record of the plot details. Additionally,
this narrator's character could be pursuing a hidden agenda or may be struggling with mental or physical challenges that further
hamper their ability to tell the reader the whole, accurate truth of events. This form includes temporary first-person narration as a
story within a story, wherein a narrator or character observing the telling of a story by another is reproduced in full, temporarily
and without interruption shifting narration to the speaker. The first-person narrator can also be the focal character.
Second-person
The second-person point of view is a point of view where the audience is made a character. This is done with the use of second-
person pronouns like you. The narrator may be addressing the audience directly, but more often the second-person referent of
these stories is a character within the story. Stories and novels in second person are comparatively uncommon. Examples include
the short fiction of Lorrie Moore and Junot Díaz and the short story The Egg by Andy Weir.

"You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and
you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy."—Opening lines of Jay
McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

The Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks are written in second person.

Third-person
In the third-person narrative mode, the narrator refers to all characters with third person pronouns like he, she, or they, and never
first- or second-person pronouns. This makes it clear that the narrator is an unspecified entity or uninvolved person who conveys
the story and is not a character of any kind within the story, or at least is not referred to as such.[13]

Traditionally, third-person narration is the most commonly used narrative mode in literature. It does not require that the narrator's
existence be explained or developed as a particular character, as would be the case with a first-person narrator. It thus allows a
story to be told without detailing any information about the teller (narrator) of the story. Instead, a third-person narrator is often
simply some disembodied commentary or voice, rather than a fully developed character. Sometimes, third-person narration is
called the "he/she" perspective.[14]

Alternating person
While the tendency for novels (or other narrative works) is to adopt a single point of view throughout the entire novel, some
authors have utilized other points of view that, for example, alternate between different first-person narrators or alternate between
a first- and a third-person narrative mode. The ten books of the Pendragon adventure series, by D. J. MacHale, switch back and
forth between a first-person perspective (handwritten journal entries) of the main character along his journey as well as a
disembodied third-person perspective focused of his friends back home.[15] Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace provides one
character's viewpoint from first-person as well as another character's from third-person limited. Often, a narrator using the first
person will try to be more objective by also employing the third person for important action scenes, especially those in which
they are not directly involved or in scenes where they are not present to have viewed the events in firsthand. This mode is found
in Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. In William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, even the perspective of a deceased person
is included.

Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife alternates between an art student named Clare, and a librarian named Henry. John
Green & David Levithan's novel Will Grayson, Will Grayson rotates between two boys both named Will Grayson. It alternates
between both boys telling their part of the story, how they meet and how their lives then come together. Nick Hornby's A Long
Way Down has four narrators, who also are its main characters. These four characters meet at the top of a tall building known as
"the suicide spot" and begin to talk instead of jumping. They then form a group and continue to meet up.

Narrative voice
The narrative voice is essential for storytelling, as this sets up the story for the reader, for example, by viewing a character's
thought processes, reading a letter written for someone, or retelling a character's experiences.
Stream-of-consciousness voice
A stream of consciousness voice gives the (typically first-person) narrator's perspective by attempting to replicate the thought
processes—as opposed to simply the actions and spoken words—of the narrative character. Often, interior monologues and inner
desires or motivations, as well as pieces of incomplete thoughts, are expressed to the audience but not necessarily to other
characters. Examples include the multiple narrators' feelings in William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying,
and the character Offred's often fragmented thoughts in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Irish writer James Joyce
exemplifies this style in his novel Ulysses.

Character voice
One of the most common narrative voices, used especially with first- and third-person viewpoints, is the character voice, in which
a story's character is presented as the narrator; this character is called a "viewpoint character". In this situation, the narrator is no
longer an unspecified entity; rather, the narrator is a more relatable, realistic character who may or may not be involved in the
actions of the story and who may or may not take a biased approach in the storytelling. If the character is directly involved in the
plot, this narrator is also called the viewpoint character. The viewpoint character is not necessarily the focal character: examples
of supporting viewpoint characters include Doctor Watson, Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, and Nick Carraway of The Great
Gatsby.

Unreliable voice
The unreliable narrative voice involves the use of an untrustworthy narrator. This mode may be employed to give the audience a
deliberate sense of disbelief in the story or a level of suspicion or mystery as to what information is meant to be true and what is
meant to be false. Unreliable narrators are usually first-person narrators; however, a third-person narrator may be unreliable.[16]
In J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, the voice of Holden Caufield, the novel's narrator is biased, juvenile, and unreliable.

Epistolary voice
The epistolary narrative voice uses a series of letters and other documents to convey the plot of the story. One example is Mary
Shelley's Frankenstein, which is a story written in a sequence of letters. Another is Bram Stoker's Dracula, which tells the story
in a series of diary entries, letters and newspaper clippings. Les Liaisons dangereuses ('Dangerous Liaisons'), by Pierre Choderlos
de Laclos, is again made up of the correspondence between the main characters, most notably the Marquise de Merteuil and the
Vicomte de Valmont. Langston Hughes does the same thing in a shorter form in his story "Passing", which consists of a young
man's letter to his mother. C. S. Lewis demonstrates this style in The Screwtape Letters.

Third-person voices
The third-person modes are usually categorized along two axes. The first is the subjectivity/objectivity axis, with third person
subjective narration involving one or more characters' personal feelings and thoughts, and third person objective narration not
describing the feelings or thoughts of any characters but, rather, just the exact facts of the story. Third-person modes may also be
categorized along the omniscient/limited axis. A third person omniscient narrator conveys information from multiple characters,
places, and events of the story, including any given characters' thoughts, and a third person limited narrator conveys the
knowledge and subjective experience of just one character. Third person narration, in both its limited and omniscient variants,
became the most popular narrative perspective during the 20th century.

Third-person, omniscient
Historically, the third-person omniscient (or simply omniscient) perspective has been the most commonly used in narrative
writing; it is seen in countless classic novels, including works by Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, and George Eliot. A story in this
narrative mode is presented by a narrator with an overarching point of view, seeing and knowing everything that happens within
the world of the story, including what each of the characters is thinking and feeling.[17] It sometimes even takes a subjective
approach. One advantage of narrative omniscience is that it enhances the sense of objective reliability (that is, apparent
truthfulness) of the plot, which may be important with more complex narratives. The third-person omniscient narrator is the least
capable of being unreliable—although the character of omniscient narrator can have its own personality, offering judgments and
opinions on the behavior of the story characters.

Third-person, subjective
The third-person subjective mode is when the narrator conveys the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of one or more characters. If
there is just one character, it can be termed third-person limited, in which the reader is limited to the thoughts of some particular
character (often the protagonist) as in the first-person mode, except still giving personal descriptions using third-person pronouns.
This is almost always the main character (for example, Gabriel in James Joyce's The Dead, Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young
Goodman Brown, or Santiago in Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea). Certain third-person omniscient modes are also
classifiable as using the third person, subjective mode when they switch between the thoughts and feelings of all the characters.

In contrast to the broad, sweeping perspectives seen in many 19th-century novels, third-person subjective is sometimes called the
"over the shoulder" perspective; the narrator only describes events perceived and information known by a character. At its
narrowest and most subjective scope, the story reads as though the viewpoint character were narrating it; dramatically this is very
similar to the first person, in that it allows in-depth revelation of the protagonist's personality, but it uses third-person grammar.
Some writers will shift perspective from one viewpoint character to another, such as in Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, or
George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.

Third-person, objective
The third-person objective mode employs a narrator who tells a story without describing any character's thoughts, opinions, or
feelings; instead, it gives an objective, unbiased point of view. Often the narrator is self-dehumanized in order to make the
narrative more neutral. This type of narrative mode, is often seen outside of fiction in newspaper articles, biographical
documents, and scientific journals. This narrative mode can be described as a "fly-on-the-wall" or "camera lens" approach that
can only record the observable actions but does not interpret these actions or relay what thoughts are going through the minds of
the characters. Works of fiction that use this style emphasize characters acting out their feelings observably. Internal thoughts, if
expressed, are given voice through an aside or soliloquy. While this approach does not allow the author to reveal the unexpressed
thoughts and feelings of the characters, it does allow the author to reveal information that not all or any of the characters may be
aware of. An example of this so-called camera-eye perspective is "Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway.

This narrative mode is also called third-person dramatic because the narrator, like the audience of a drama, is neutral and
ineffective toward the progression of the plot—merely an uninvolved onlooker.

Third-person, free/indirect
The third person indirect style is a method of presenting a character's voice freely and spontaneously in the middle of an
otherwise third-person non-personal narrator.

Third-person, alternating
Many stories, especially in literature, alternate between the third person limited and third person omniscient. In this case, an
author will move back and forth between a more omniscient third-person narrator to a more personal third-person limited
narrator. Typically, like the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin, a switch of third-person limited viewpoint on
some character is done only at chapter boundaries. The Home and the World, written in 1916 by Rabindranath Tagore, is another
example of a book switching among just three characters at chapter boundaries. In The Heroes of Olympus series, the point of
view changes between characters at intervals. The Harry Potter series is told in third-person limited for much of the seven novels,
but deviates to omniscient on occasions, particularly during the opening chapters of later novels in the series, which switch from
the limited view of the eponymous Harry to other characters (for example, the Muggle Prime Minister in the Half-Blood
Prince).[18]

Narrative tense
Narratives may also vary in the grammatical tense used, typically being in the past, present, or future. In narration using the past
tense, the events of the plot are depicted as occurring before the time at which the narrative is constructed; this is by far the most
common tense in which stories are expressed. In narratives using present tense, the events of the plot are depicted as occurring
now—at the current moment—in real time. In English, this tense, also known as the "historical present", is more common in
spontaneous conversational narratives than in written literature, though it is sometimes used in literature to give a sense of
immediacy of the actions. A recent example of novels narrated in the present tense are those of the Hunger Games trilogy by
Suzanne Collins. The future tense is the most rare, portraying the events of the plot as occurring some time after the present
moment, in a time-period yet to come. Often, these upcoming events are described such that the narrator has foreknowledge (or
supposed foreknowledge) of the future, so many future-tense stories have a prophetic tone.

Other types and uses

Text-based interactive fiction, such as Zork, conventionally has descriptions written in the second person (though exceptions
exist), telling the character what they are seeing and doing. This practice is also encountered occasionally in text-based segments
of graphical games, such as those from Spiderweb Software, which make ample use of second person flavor text in pop up text
boxes with character and location descriptions. Charles Stross's novel Halting State was written in second person as an allusion to
this style.[19][20]

See also
Narrative structure
Opening narration
Pace

Notes
1. Hühn, Peter; Sommer, Roy (2012). "Narration in Poetry and Drama" (http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/narrat
ion-poetry-and-drama). The Living Handbook of Narratology. Interdisciplinary Center for Narratology, University
of Hamburg.
2. Woltag, Laura (2012). "Narration" (https://ezproxy.dacc.edu:4443/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.
dacc.edu:4048/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ers&AN=98402287&site=eds-live).
3. James McCracken, ed. (2011). The Oxford English Dictionary (http://www.oed.com/) (Online ed.). Oxford
University Press. Retrieved October 16, 2011.
4. Boris Uspensky, A Poetics of Composition: The Structure of the Artistic Text and Typology of Compositional
Form, trans. Valentina Zavarin and Susan Wittig (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1973).
 5. Susan Sniader Lanser, The Narrative Act: Point of View in Prose Fiction (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press. 1981).
6. James L. Resseguie, "Point of View," in How John Works: Storytelling in the Fourth Gospel, ed. Douglas Estes
and Ruth Sheridan (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016), 83-5.
7. Lanser, 201-202.
8. Uspensky, 8.
9. Lanser, 216-17.
10. Resseguie, How John Works, 93-95.
11. Lanser, 216-17.
12. Wyile, Andrea Schwenke (1999). "Expanding the View of First-Person Narration". Children's Literature in
Education. 30 (3): 185–202. doi:10.1023/a:1022433202145 (https://doi.org/10.1023%2Fa%3A1022433202145).
ISSN 0045-6713 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0045-6713).
13. Paul Ricoeur (15 September 1990). Time and Narrative (https://books.google.com/books?id=vjBw9NuSkuEC&pg
=PA89). University of Chicago Press. pp. 89–. ISBN 978-0-226-71334-2.
14. Ranjbar Vahid. The Narrator, Iran: Baqney 2011 (http://signbook.persiangig.com/document/literature/theory/raavi
1.pdf)
15. White, Claire E (2004). "A Conversation With D.J. MacHale (http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/oct04/a-conversa
tion-with-d-j-machale-10041)." The Internet Writing Journal. Writer Write, Inc.
16. Murphy, Terence Patrick; Walsh, Kelly S. (2017). "Unreliable Third Person Narration? The Case of Katherine
Mansfield". Journal of Literary Semantics. 46 (1). doi:10.1515/jls-2017-0005 (https://doi.org/10.1515%2Fjls-2017-
0005).
17. Herman, David; Jahn, Manfred; Ryan (2005), Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, Taylor & Francis,
p. 442, ISBN 978-0-415-28259-8
18. Rowling, J.K. (2005). Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (https://archive.org/details/isbn_074758110x).
London: Bloomsbury. pp. 6–18. ISBN 978-0-7475-8108-6.
19. "Halting State, Review" (http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-441-01498-9). Publishers Weekly. 1 October
2007.
20. Charles Stross. "And another thing" (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/05/and-another-thing.html).

Further reading
Rasley, Alicia (2008). The Power of Point of View: Make Your Story Come to Life (1st ed.). Cincinnati, Ohio:
Writer's Digest Books. ISBN 978-1-59963-355-8.
Card, Orson Scott (1988). Characters and Viewpoint (https://archive.org/details/charactersviewpo00card) (1st
ed.). Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer's Digest Books. ISBN 978-0-89879-307-9.
Fludernik, Monika (1996). Towards a "Natural" Narratology. London: Routledge.
Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse. An Essay in Method. Transl. by Jane Lewin. Oxford: Blackwell 1980
(Translation of Discours du récit).
Stanzel, Franz Karl. A theory of Narrative. Transl. by Charlotte Goedsche. Cambridge: CUP 1984 (Transl. of
Theorie des Erzählens).

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Narration&oldid=922502437"

This page was last edited on 22 October 2019, at 14:42 (UTC).

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using
this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.