Narration facts for kids
Narration is how a story is told to an audience, either through writing or speaking. It's like a guide who explains what's happening. This guide is called a narrator. The narrator is a person or a voice created by the story's author. Their job is to share information with you, especially about the plot, which is the series of events in the story.
Narration is super important in all written stories, like novels, short stories, poems, and memoirs. It's how the whole story is presented. But in other types of storytelling, like movies, plays, TV shows, and video games, narration isn't always needed. These stories can use other ways to show what's happening, such as characters talking to each other or through visual actions.
The narrative mode is all about the choices an author makes when creating their narrator and how the story is told. These choices include:
- Narrative point of view: This is about who is telling the story. It decides if the narrator is part of the story or just watching from the outside. It also covers how much the narrator knows.
- Narrative tense: This is about when the story happens. Is it happening now (present tense) or did it happen before (past tense)?
- Narrative technique: These are the different methods used to tell a story. This includes setting the scene (where and when the story takes place), making characters interesting, exploring the main ideas (themes), organizing the plot, choosing what details to share, and using different storytelling tricks.
So, narration is about both who tells the story and how they tell it. Sometimes the narrator is a character in the story, and sometimes they are just an unknown voice. A narrator might simply tell the story without being involved in the events. Some stories even have many narrators to show different characters' experiences.
Contents
Understanding the Storyteller's View
The way a story is told, or its point of view, is a big part of how you experience it. It's about the storyteller's position and how they relate to the events.
How the Story is Told
The way a story is told can change how you understand it. For example, if events are told after they've happened, the narrator might know more than the characters. They can explain why things happened or what the characters missed.
The speed of the narration also matters. A story can slow down to make you focus on important moments. Or it can speed up, summarizing events that are less important.
The narrator's feelings about characters can also shape your view. If the narrator says negative things about a character, you might feel distant from them. If they say positive things, you might feel closer.
The words chosen by the narrator or characters can also show a point of view. For example, the names or descriptions given to a character can tell you what the narrator thinks of them.
Finally, the narrator's beliefs and values are important. These can be stated directly, or they can be hidden in the story's deeper meaning. This helps you understand the narrator's worldview.
First-Person Point of View
In a first-person story, the narrator is a character in the story. They tell the story using words like I and me. This creates a close connection between the narrator and you, the reader. You get to hear their thoughts and feelings directly.
Often, the first-person narrator is the main character, called the protagonist. You learn what they are thinking, even if other characters don't know.
A first-person narrator might have a limited view. They can't see or understand everything that happens. So, they might not be able to tell the full, accurate truth of events. They might also have their own hidden reasons for telling the story a certain way, or they could be dealing with challenges that affect what they share.
Sometimes, a story might temporarily switch to a first-person view when one character tells a story within the main story. Famous examples of supporting characters who narrate in first person include Doctor Watson in Sherlock Holmes stories and Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby.
Second-Person Point of View
The second-person point of view makes you, the audience, a character in the story. It uses words like you. The narrator might be talking directly to you, or "you" might refer to a character within the story.
Novels written in second person are quite rare. This point of view is more common in songs and poems. However, some famous examples include If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino and parts of N. K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season.
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)
Gamebooks, like Choose Your Own Adventure and Fighting Fantasy series, often use second-person narration. They tell you what you are doing and seeing, making you feel like you are the character making choices. Text-based interactive fiction games, like Zork, also use this style.
Third-Person Point of View
In the third-person narrative, the story refers to all characters using words like he, she, or they. The narrator is not a character in the story. It's like an anonymous voice telling you what's happening.
This is the most common way stories are told in literature. The narrator doesn't need to be explained or developed as a character. They are often just a voice that comments on the story, without you knowing anything about them. Sometimes, this is called the "he/she" perspective.
Third-person stories are usually grouped in two ways:
- Subjective or Objective: Does the narrator share characters' thoughts and feelings (subjective) or just the facts (objective)?
- Omniscient or Limited: Does the narrator know everything about everyone (omniscient) or only what one character knows (limited)?
Third-person narration, both limited and omniscient, became very popular in the 1900s.
Omniscient or Limited
An omniscient narrator is like an all-knowing observer. They see and know everything in the story's world, including what every character is thinking and feeling. This point of view is very common in classic novels by authors like Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy. It makes the story feel very reliable and true, especially for complex plots. An omniscient narrator can even have their own personality and share opinions about the characters.
Many stories, especially in literature, switch between different characters' points of view, often at the start of new chapters. For example, the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin does this. The Harry Potter series mainly follows Harry, but sometimes switches to other characters, especially in the opening chapters of later books.
A limited third-person narrator follows the perspective of just one character. This is very common in literature since the early 1900s. The Harry Potter books are a good example of this, as they mostly stick to Harry's point of view.
Subjective or Objective
A subjective point of view means the narrator shares the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of one or more characters. If it's just one character, it's called third-person limited. You are limited to that character's thoughts, similar to first-person, but using "he" or "she." This is usually the main character, like Santiago in Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. When an omniscient narrator switches between the thoughts of all characters, it's also subjective.
This "over the shoulder" view means the narrator only describes what a character sees and knows. It's very similar to first-person because it lets you deeply understand the character's personality, but it uses third-person words. Some writers will switch between different viewpoint characters, like in Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time.
Free indirect speech is when a character's thoughts are presented in the narrator's voice.
An objective point of view means the narrator tells the story without describing any character's thoughts, opinions, or feelings. It's an unbiased, factual view. This style is often found in newspaper articles or scientific reports. It's like a "fly-on-the-wall" or "camera lens" that only records what can be seen and heard, without interpreting actions or knowing what characters are thinking. If characters have internal thoughts, they are usually spoken aloud. This approach doesn't let the author reveal hidden thoughts, but it can reveal information that characters might not know. An example is "Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway.
This style is also called third-person dramatic because the narrator is neutral and doesn't affect the plot, just like an audience watching a play.
Alternating Point of View
While most novels stick to one point of view, some authors switch between different narrators or different points of view. For example, they might alternate between different first-person narrators or between first-person and third-person.
The Pendragon series switches between the main character's first-person journal entries and a third-person view of his friends back home. Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace shows one character's view in first-person and another's in third-person limited. Sometimes, a first-person narrator might use third-person for action scenes where they aren't directly involved, to sound more objective. This happens in Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. In William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, even a deceased person's perspective is included.
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger alternates between two characters, Clare and Henry. Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan switches between two boys, both named Will Grayson, as they tell their parts of the story. The Animorphs series' special Megamorphs books alternate narration among the six main characters.
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk has many different first-person narrators, sometimes even animals or objects.
Narrative Tense
Narrative tense tells you when the story's events are happening.
In the past tense, the events of the story happened before the narrator is telling them. This is the most common tense for stories. It doesn't matter if the story's setting is in our past, present, or future; the events themselves are described as already completed.
In the present tense, the story's events are happening right now, as the narrator tells them. A recent example is Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Present tense can also be used to describe historical events, which is called "historical present". This tense is more common in everyday conversations than in written books, but it can make a story feel very immediate and exciting. Screenplays (scripts for movies) are also written in the present tense.
The future tense is the rarest. It describes events that will happen after the narrator's current moment. Often, these stories have a prophetic feel, as if the narrator knows what's coming. An example is Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang.
Narrative Technique
Stream-of-Consciousness
Stream-of-consciousness narration tries to show the narrator's thoughts exactly as they happen, not just their actions or spoken words. It often includes inner thoughts, desires, and incomplete ideas, which are shared with you but not necessarily with other characters. Examples include the thoughts of characters in William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, and Offred's fragmented thoughts in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. James Joyce's novel Ulysses is a famous example of this style.
Unreliable Narrator
An unreliable narrator is a storyteller you can't fully trust. This technique is used to make you doubt parts of the story or wonder what is true and what isn't. Unreliable narrators are usually first-person narrators, but a third-person narrator can also be unreliable. A famous example is J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, where the narrator, Holden Caulfield, is biased, emotional, and young, and sometimes hides or changes information.
See also
- Narrative structure
- Opening narration
- Pace
Images for kids
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A robot representing a narrator for children.
