Narration
A specific person or an unspecified literary voice delivers information to an audience through written or spoken commentary. This entity is known as a narrator and serves as the primary vehicle for conveying plot details in all written stories. Novels, short stories, poems, and memoirs rely on this element to present their narratives in full. Films, plays, television shows, and video games often treat narration as optional since dialogue or visual action can tell the story instead. The creator of the story develops the narrator to establish how much information reaches the listener about the series of events unfolding before them.
Gérard Genette distinguished between intradiegetic and extradiegetic narrative when analyzing the position of the storyteller relative to the story itself. Boris Uspenskij identified five planes where point of view expresses itself within any artistic text. These planes include spatial, temporal, psychological, phraseological, and ideological dimensions that shape how a reader perceives the narrative. Susan Sniader Lanser expanded these categories to explore the complex relationship between the narrator's distance and each character's actions. The ideological point of view remains the least accessible to formalization because it relies on intuitive understanding of norms, values, and beliefs embedded deep within the text.
Narrative past tense places the events of the plot before the narrator's current moment of time. This form is by far the most common way stories are expressed across all genres and eras. Present tense depicts events occurring in the narrator's immediate now, creating a sense of immediacy for the audience. Suzanne Collins used present tense for her Hunger Games trilogy to heighten the feeling of ongoing action. Historical present allows writers to narrate past events as if they are happening right now, often found in spontaneous conversation or screenplay action scripts.
Stream-of-consciousness writing attempts to replicate the actual thought processes of a character rather than just their spoken words. James Joyce exemplified this style in his novel Ulysses while William Faulkner applied similar techniques in The Sound and the Fury. Margaret Atwood utilized fragmented thoughts for her character Offred in The Handmaid's Tale to convey internal states directly. Unreliable narration introduces an untrustworthy voice that creates suspicion about what information is true versus false. J.D. Salinger employed this mode through Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, who deliberately divulges or withholds details based on his emotional state.
Elders within Indigenous American communities tell narratives together so that no single story remains static over time. Each individual storyteller incorporates minor changes to tailor the tale to different audiences during performance. Lee Haring explained how multiple narratives offer insight into social identity development and impact overarching stories. One Thousand and One Nights used framing devices where each story was enclosed within a larger narrative structure. An Irish storyteller from 1935 framed one story inside another while working as a smith fixing a sword for a customer.
Common questions
What is a narrator in literature and film?
A narrator is the specific person or literary voice that delivers information to an audience through written or spoken commentary. This entity serves as the primary vehicle for conveying plot details in all written stories including novels, short stories, poems, and memoirs.
Who distinguished between intradiegetic and extradiegetic narrative?
Gérard Genette distinguished between intradiegetic and extradiegetic narrative when analyzing the position of the storyteller relative to the story itself. Boris Uspenskij identified five planes where point of view expresses itself within any artistic text.
Which author used present tense for her Hunger Games trilogy?
Suzanne Collins used present tense for her Hunger Games trilogy to heighten the feeling of ongoing action. Present tense depicts events occurring in the narrator's immediate now creating a sense of immediacy for the audience.
How did James Joyce exemplify stream-of-consciousness writing?
James Joyce exemplified this style in his novel Ulysses while William Faulkner applied similar techniques in The Sound and the Fury. Stream-of-consciousness writing attempts to replicate the actual thought processes of a character rather than just their spoken words.
When did an Irish storyteller frame one story inside another while working as a smith?
An Irish storyteller from 1935 framed one story inside another while working as a smith fixing a sword for a customer. Elders within Indigenous American communities tell narratives together so that no single story remains static over time.