Narrative Techniques: Point of View, Narrator Types, and Speech
Understanding Narrative Voice and Techniques
The narrator’s point of view is a narrative technique connected with the stance the narrator takes in relation to the story they tell. The narrator may adopt various points of view. For example, the narrator can be an external voice, standing in a supernatural position above all the characters created, aware of what they know and how they feel. On other occasions, the narrator may be the voice of a principal (often the main) character, or the voice of one of the story’s minor characters who adopts the position of an observer.
Types of Narrators
The omniscient narrator is provided with information about other characters that is not given to them. Although ‘we’ can occasionally be used by the omniscient narrator, it is more appropriate for the intrusive narrator and the first-person narrator.
In the First-Person Narrator, the narrator is one of the central characters; that is, the author adopts the persona of one of the principal fictional characters and conducts the thread of the story.
A fringe narrator is also a fictional character, but their role in the events of the plot is often minimal or irrelevant. Their main function is to observe.
The third-person narrator is not a fictional character within the plot. As an outsider to the story, they observe all characters, referring to them with the neutral ‘he,’ ‘she,’ or ‘they.’
The intrusive narrator: Authors offer the reader general statements or interpretations, which inevitably interrupt the narrative thread.
Alternate Narrators: This technique consists of having several first-person narrators narrating alternatively. All these variations share the common feature of presenting information in interrupted sequences, intermittently.
Advanced Narrative Techniques
Chinese Boxes: An author will move back and forth between a more omniscient third-person narrator and a more personal first-person narrator. Often, the first-person narrator 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 firsthand.
Point of View as Ideological Orientation: In this way, the ‘narrative point of view’ acts as an alert and knowledgeable filter for all the events and circumstances that take place in the story before the reader comes to know them. This filter will also affect the characters’ speech and thoughts; the narrator will intervene by converting them into narrativized speech and thought through indirect style.
The Concept of Attachment: This alludes to the psychological distance between the narrator and the characters of the narration that the author has created when choosing a point of view. This ‘distance’ should be interpreted as the degree of support or sympathy which readers are induced to experience.
Speech in Narrative Discourse
The Polyphony of the Text: As we have seen, point of view is an influential narrative artifice. The primary role of speech in narrative discourse includes the introduction of a social or ethical argument, the presentation of facts or evidence, the assessment of a moral issue, and more. While discourse presents action and events (narration), in some novels, speech bears the greatest responsibility in the creation of plot, action, setting, and character. Textual speech is formed by the voices of all the characters; in this case, the text becomes ‘polyphonic,’ as the narrator’s lone voice joins a consortium of other voices.
Direct Speech
Direct speech offers several advantages:
- It gives fictional characters autonomy to speak directly without any apparent authorial filter. The opposite of autonomy in this case is ‘narrativization.’
- Autonomy helps in creating the impression of naturalness, proximity, and even intimacy. The presentation of the original register of formality by preserving the original lexical and syntactic features of the actual utterance helps in creating this impression of naturalness.
- It gives variety to the text, as the voice of the narrator alternates intermittently with the voices of the characters. The text then becomes polyphonic, breaking the possible monotony of the narrator’s sole voice. The text is now richer with new voices that can offer stylistic variety in lexis, syntax, phonology, dialect, and register.
Indirect Speech
In indirect speech, there are:
- Changes in tense.
- Changes in the person of the subject of the clause.
- Changes in other words.
However, indirect speech has limitations:
- It cannot always guarantee the exact reproduction of the characters’ words.
- There is not always an even balance between the language of the narrator and the language of the characters. The characters’ speech does not necessarily have to be perfect. Inevitably, the characters’ speech is influenced by the richer and more careful prose of the narrator.
Free Indirect Speech
Free indirect speech has a ‘blended’ nature:
- It is free, meaning it has grammatical autonomy in the preservation of emotive elements (exclamations, colloquialisms, slangy words, etc.), in syntactic features suggesting dialogue (e.g., ‘I asked him what were you doing here?’), or in the lack of subordination clauses.
- It is indirect in that it has the same changes in verbal forms (present tense becomes past tense, etc.) and in personal pronouns (first and second person, etc.) as in indirect speech.
Submerged Speech
Submerged speech shares a common feature with free indirect speech, namely, an attempt at narrativization, which is absolute in submerged speech and relative in free indirect speech.
Stream of Consciousness and Interior Monologue
The term ‘stream of consciousness’ is the label applied to the effect of a number of techniques used to represent human consciousness, especially the embryonic stage of thought characterized by chaos and contradiction, often called ‘interior monologue.’ This is achieved thanks to the combination of free direct style and free indirect style in the expression of interior monologue.