Learning about the different types of narrators and how to write them well is one of the most important aspects of a writer’s education.
Narration is a critical area of any story, one which cannot be ignored.
For without a narrator, there can be no story.
What Is a Narrator?
In a novel, a narrator refers to the voice that tells the story.
A novel can have one, two or multiple narrators. How many narrators to have is an artistic choice each writer has to make for each story they write, and it’s one of the most impactful choices they will make.
Types of Narration
First Person Narration
The easiest form of narration to understand is first person narration: when a character within the story (usually, but not always, the protagonist) tells the story in their voice and from their point-of-view.
For example: “I woke up one morning and found I’d become a ghost. I was pretty disturbed, I can tell you that!”
The above sentence is first-person past tense. The present tense version of this would be: “I wake up one morning and find I’m a ghost. I’m pretty disturbed, I can tell you that!”
Second Person Narration
This is the rarest-used form of narration. This form of narration seeks to make the reader the character.
For example: “Imagine you woke up last week and found you’d become a ghost. You were pretty surprised and horrified, weren’t you? The first thing you probably wondered is, ‘how did I die?’’’
It’s rare to find a novel entirely written in second person narration, and those that do exist are more likely to be written in present tense, as it’s more immersive. Past tense second person, as you can see in the example above, can be awkward and clunky.
Present Tense usually flows a little better: “Imagine you wake up and find you’ve become a ghost. You’re pretty surprised and horrified, aren’t you? You wonder how you died.”
Third Person Narration Limited: Single Point-of-View
This form of narration is provided by a silent, unnamed narrator, who only has access to the mind of one character. This character’s voice will regularly infuse the narrative, so that the unnamed narrator has no discernible voice separate from the character.
For example: “David woke up one cold Winter morning and discovered he was a ghost. He was horrified. How the blazes had this happened? He’d always suspected his neighbour of murderous intentions, but never suspected the chump had the gall to actually go through with it. This was quite the pickle he found himself in now.”
Words like “blazes,” “chump,” and “pickle,” are the types of words David uses in his thoughts, and not the unidentified narrator’s word-choices.
Third person limited narration is usually written as a ‘close’ point-of-view. This refers to third person narration that stays close within the point-of-view character’s thoughts and perspectives.
For example, when describing the setting, it will always be shown from the perspective of the point-of-view character.
The narrator is merely a narrative construct, rather than a character within the story.
For example, if a day is described as “gloomy and dull,” we understand that this is the perspective of our point-of-view character, and may reveal as much about their current mind-set as it does about the weather itself.
This form of narration can be written in both past and present tense.
Third Person Narration Limited: Multiple Point-of-View
This is just as third person limited (above), but the narrator can switch between the point-of-view of different characters in different scenes.
However, the narrator will only stay in the mind of one character at a time, so you will see each scene from the perspective of only one character. This narration doesn’t look into the minds of two different characters at the same time, unless the same scene is rewritten entirely from a different character’s point-of-view. In this scenario, there needs to be a clear demarcation between the two scenes.
The narrator can only provide you with information and perspectives that the point-of-view characters have.
Both past and present tense are possible for this form of narration.
Third Person Narration Omniscient: Detached
Within this type of narration, the narrator can enter any character’s head at any point throughout a scene, but remains a silent observer. The thoughts and perspectives provided will always be those of the character whose head we’ve entered, and not those of the silent narrator.
However, the narrator can have access to information that the characters don’t have, and may choose to give the reader that information at different times.
For example: “In his ghost form, David flew over his neighbour’s garden, and saw that brute Goliath swiping branches off a perfectly healthy tree with his machete. As much as it’s possible for a ghost to shiver, David shivered. Could he save the poor tree somehow?
Goliath, meanwhile, shook his head in sadness. His heart sunk with every swipe, but he knew it was for the best. Got to remove the unnecessary branches from the tree. He didn’t enjoy it, but he knew his responsibilities. Sometimes you’d no choice but to remove the dead weight from the world, to make it a healthier place.
If Goliath had known that his actions were upsetting the ghost watching him, he probably would have cut off even more branches in spite. Luckily for the tree, Goliath remained blissfully unaware of the existence of ghosts. This, however, was all about to change.”
Here, the narrator can see into the future, in ways David and Goliath can’t.
Third Person Narration Omniscient: Opinionated
This is a narrator who knows everything, and has his/her own opinions, and may even possess a personality of their own.
This style of narration was popular in Victorian literature, where the narrator could guide the reader towards the correct moral interpretation of the story.
The narrator can go into the head of any character at will, and the narrator can also provide their own judgements and perspective.
For example: “It was a sunny day when David woke up, though it didn’t feel that way to him. Now he was a ghost, he’d never feel the warmth of the sun on his skin again – at least, not until he fulfilled his final task and could ascend into Enlightenment, which would be the final destination of a good man like him.
David, however, had no clue as to any of this. He just assumed he’d slept funny, and cut off the bloodstream to his feet, and – he realised slowly – also his legs, his torso, his arms, neck, and blast it! If he’d possessed any blood to drain from his face, as he realised he was now a ghost, it would have done so. But since he was no longer flesh and blood, all that happened was that his form slowly rose up to the ceiling like smoke and curled around itself despondently.”
Here, the first paragraph provides the narrator’s opinion about the afterlife, and David’s destination within it. In the second paragraph, we’re taken into David’s head, and shown the thoughts and sensations of his, which the omniscient narrator wishes us to see.
Who Is the Narrator?
One key point to mention here is that the narrator of a story is different from the author.
There are limited exceptions here, for example, in the case of autobiographies and memoirs, where the author writes as the narrator. However even then, the narrator is a carefully constructed version of the author, that the author allows you to see.
Certain postmodern genres enjoy playing with the construct of narrator versus author. For example, the genre of auto-fiction has the author presenting a fictionalised account of their life in which we’re never clearly able to distinguish between fact and fiction. The author blends the roles of author and narrator in this genre.
However, the key difference to remember is that the author is a real person hidden behind their book, whereas the narrator is a fictional presence or character telling the story.
Narrator Examples
Let’s look at some examples of different types of narrators.
First Person
First person narrators are most often the protagonists of a story. For example, in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, the story opens with the eponymous protagonist-narrator introducing himself: “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”
By contrast, the first person narrator in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is Lockwood, a man who plays little role at all in the action of the story, and is most certainly not the story’s protagonist: “I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.”
It’s the solitary landlord, Heathcliff, who will hold our attention for much of the story.
Since Lockwood isn’t actually present for much of the story’s action, scenes and chapters are often given from the first-person narration of other characters. However, these characters never speak to the reader directly, and all of their reported accounts are given to us through Healthcliff, as he tells us of their words.
Lockwood often provides their accounts through direct, rather than reported speech, supposedly using the exact words they give. The reader has the choice between suspending their disbelief that Lockwood remembers their words exactly, or in choosing to believe that his account of their dialogue may be tinged with his own attitudes and assumptions.
Second Person
Examples of this type of narration are much rarer. One of the most famous examples is Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, which opens: “You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveller. Relax. Concentrate.”
Here, you, the reader, become the protagonist of these lines.
Third Person Limited: Single POV
George Orwell’s 1984 provides a strong example of this type of narration. The story is told from Winston’s perspective, and we never see into the mind of any other character.
However, because it’s written in third person limited rather than first person narration, the narrator does at times provide world-building information which the reader needs to know, which would not necessarily be information within Winston’s present-time thoughts in the novel.
However, the narrative sections dealing with world-building are consistent with the perspective Winston takes of his world. The narrator doesn’t give us access to information that Winston wouldn’t have.
Third Person Limited: Multiple POV
A great example of this is George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.
This novel uses varying points of view, but each chapter sticks with only one character’s point-of-view.
Within each chapter, we have the chance to bond with the point-of-view character from whose mind we see the scene.
Third Person Omniscient: Detached
Kamila Shamsie uses this form of narration in her novel Burnt Shadows. The first Chapter opens: “Later, the one who survives will remember that day as grey, but on the morning of 9 August itself both the man from Berlin, Konrad Weiss, and the schoolteacher, Hiroko Tanaka, step out of their houses and notice the perfect blueness of the sky, into which white smoke blooms from the chimney of the munitions factories.
Kornrad cannot see the chimneys themselves from his home in Minamiyante, but for months now his thoughts have frequently wandered to the factory where Hiroko Tanaka spends her days measuring the thickness of steel with micrometers, images of classrooms swooping into her thoughts the way memories of flight might enter the broken-winged binds.”
In this extract, the narrator enters the minds of two different characters within the same sentence. The narrator has more knowledge than either character because they know the future (that only one will survive). But the narrator presents no personal opinions on this point.
The narrator here is a detached fictional construct, whose purpose is to give the reader all the information they need to know for each particular point in the story.
Third Person Omniscient: Opinionated
We see this in George Eliott’s Middlemarch, which opens: “Miss Brooke had the kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.”
We soon learn that this opinion on Miss Brooke’s beauty does not belong to Miss Brooke (a character who takes no regard whatsoever for her physical appearance) but is the view of our omniscient narrator, who will guide us in interpreting all the characters and events of the story as we read.
Tips for Selecting a Narrator Type
Don’t Worry About Definitions
As you study up on narrator types, you may get confused if you find different writers use different names for the same type of narration.
I’ve tried to give you the most common definition-names for the different narrative types, but you will easily find different opinions on this online.
For example, some people will refer to the narration in Game of Thrones as third person limited, and others refer to it as third person multiple.
Try not to get overwhelmed by this. It doesn’t actually matter which name or definition you give each different narrative type. What matters is that you understand the rules of each type, so that you can write the type you choose well.
No reader cares whether you’ve defined your narrative type as third person limited or third person multiple, so long as your narrative reads well in an immersive fashion, and doesn’t pull them out of the story through sudden inconsistency and confusion.
Focus on learning how to write each narrative type well, not on whether one person has used the correct definition or not.
Consider Advantages and Restrictions
This is a detailed subject, which I can’t entirely cover in the scope of this article. However, in brief, consider:
- Genre: certain narrative types are commonly found in certain genres, and it’s wise to take this into account as you write. First person present tense is popular in YA novels, third person limited is popular in adult historical romances, and so on.
- Is the story about one person or a group of people? Can you do the story’s themes justice with only one point-of-view? If this is the story of a group or society, a single point-of-view may be unnecessarily limiting.
- Will your story be stronger or weaker if you employ an unreliable narrator? First person narratives often carry an element of unreliability, which can be interesting to play with – but only if it strengthens your story and possible interpretations.
- Do you need to give your reader access to information which none of your characters have? In which case, omniscient narration may be best.
- If you’re sticking to one point-of-view, will your reader benefit most from a narration which at times gives you access to character’s thoughts which they may not be thinking in real time? In which case, third person limited narration may have advantages over first person narration.
- Do you want to guide the reader’s interpretation of events? In which case, omniscient narration may be helpful. Or, you might choose first person past tense, in which the first-person narrator reflects on a story that’s already taken place from their current real-time perspective.
- Is it important to you that the reader has no clue what’s about to happen to your first-person narrator? In which case, present tense can offer advantages over past tense, as the narrator will be as clueless as the reader as to how events will play out.
Consider the Difficulty
Certain narrative types are particularly challenging to write, requiring a high level of skill.
Onmiscient narration is one of these.
Creative writing teachers often push students away from omniscient narration, which is also less commonly found in literature today.
To write omniscient narration, you must have a strong handle on how to carry the reader along so that they don’t feel jarred when you move from one point-of-view to another.
If you’re planning to write from an omniscient point-of-view, understand that it can be done well, but you might need to study the skills before you can pull it off effectively.
A great place to start studying is Alicia Rasley’s The Power of Point of View.
Conclusion
Understanding how to write different narrative techniques is a key writing skill.
The good news is, you probably have some instinctive understanding of the skill from your experience as a reader.
If you’re struggling to get your head around this topic, a great place to come and learn more is the Fictionary online writers’ community. Here, writers chat about different aspects of writing and editing, learning together how to hone their skills.