First-person narrators

When a story is told by someone outside the action, he is called a third-person narrator (because he refers to everybody in the story in the third person: 'he', 'she', 'they'). In this form of narration the person who is telling the story is like an observer who has witnessed what has happened, but plays no part in the events.

 

Omniscient point of view

The omniscient third-person narrator is a kind of god; he is all-knowing. He knows everything about the fictional world he has created: he can read other characters' innermost thoughts, he is able to be in several places at once, he knows exactly what is going to happen and how each character will behave. He is free to tell us as much or as little as he wishes. An omniscient third-person narrator who interrupts the narrative and speaks directly to the readers is called obtrusive. He may use these intrusions to summarise, philosophise, moralise or to guide the reader's interpretation of events. This kind of narrator was particularly popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. If the narrator does not address the reader directly he is referred to as non-obtrusive.

 

Omniscient point of view

When an author uses a limited omniscient narrator, he chooses a character in the story and tells the story from his point of view. This character becomes the centre of revelation and the reader sees the events and other characters from his viewpoint. If the narrator moves back and forth between an omniscient viewpoint and the viewpoint of the focal character, we refer to the narrative technique as 'free indirect style'. Free indirect style is perhaps the most widely-used mode of narration in modern fiction. Limited omniscient narration involves the reader more than pure omniscient narration. By associating the narrating voice with one of the characters in the story, the author gives it an identity and therefore makes it more interesting for the reader. Also, because much of the story is told from the partial viewpoint of one of the characters, the reader gets the idea that anything can happen in the course of the novel, just as it can in real life.

 

Dramatic or objective point of view

When an author uses a dramatic or objective point of view, the story seems to be told by no one. This narrative technique has often been compared to a videocamera left running. The narrator does not mediate between the story and the reader. He steps aside and allows the story to present itself through setting, action and dialogue. The reader is never taken inside the minds of the characters. He is presented with material which he alone must analyse and interpret. Although the narrator does not actively participate in the storytelling, he does have an important role to play in this type of narrative. It is the narrator who decides when to turn the videocamera on and off and where to point it. He decides what material to present, and his choices will obviously affect the reader's response. The dramatic point of view is widely used by modern writers because of the impersonal and objective way it presents experience.

 

Stream of consciousness

Stream of consciousness is the term applied to any attempt by a writer to represent the conscious and subconscious thoughts and impressions in the mind of a character. This technique takes the reader inside the narrating character's mind, where he sees the world of the story through the thoughts and senses of the focal character.

 At the beginning of the twentieth century some authors, notably James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner, developed a stream of consciousness technique called interior monologue

 

Interior monologue

 The term is borrowed from drama, where monologue refers to the part in a play where an actor expresses his inner thoughts aloud to the audience. In fiction, an interior monologue is a record of a characters, thoughts and sense impressions.

 As people do not think in complete, well-formed logical sentences, Joyce, Woolf and Faulkner abandoned traditional syntax, punctuation and logical connections in order to represent the flow of a character's thoughts. For example, in Joyce's Ulysses (1922) the reader finds himself with a transcript of one of the character's thoughts which contains no commas, full stops or capital letters. The stop, start, disjointed and often illogical nature of interior monologue makes it a challenge for the reader to interpret.

Plot

The term plot refers to an author's arrangement of the events that make up a story. The plot of a work is not necessarily the same as the story. When we tell a story we generally start at the beginning and continue in a chronological order until we come to the end. Plots, however, do not always follow this pattern. Many writers choose to mix events up in order to provoke specific responses in the reader. They may, for example, start in the middle of things (in medias res) and use flashbacks or dialogue to refer to previous events.

 The author's choices regarding plot do not stop simply at organising the events of his tale. He must also decide when the story begins, which events should be dealt with at length, which aspects of the story can be quickly summarised and when the story should end. Time is entirely subjective. The events of several years can be condensed into a paragraph, while a complete chapter may be dedicated to a particularly significant moment. The author's aim in writing a story will direct the choices he makes, and therefore analysing these aspects of plot gives us invaluable insight into the meaning of his work.

Love stories, adventure stories, detective stories, horror stories: writers never seem to run out of ideas for stories. Although each story is unique, many of them share some basic elements.

 

Conflict

Conflict is the driving force behind many plots. It may come from:

 • outside: the main character may be in conflict with external forces such as his family, society, physical hardship or nature;

 • within: the character may be forced to make a difficult choice, or he may have to question his values and beliefs.

 

Suspense

Suspense is also an important element in many plots. Creating suspense generally involves denying the reader immediate access to information which is essential to the full understanding of the story. The clearest example of this can be found in detective stories, where the author does not reveal the identity of the murderer until the very last moment. Suspense is often created through the careful ordering of events in the story.

 

Subplot

In some stories the main plot is accompanied by a subplot - a second story that is complete in its own right. The subplot is usually linked in some way to events in the main plot and generally helps to deepen our understanding of it.

Prose Story Forms