Narrative Voice

Someone in your story has to tell us that Jeff pulled out his gun, that Samantha smiled at the tall stranger, that daylight was breaking over the valley. That someone is the narrator or “author's persona.”

The author’s persona of a fictional narrative can help or hinder the success of the story. Which persona you adopt depends on what kind of story you are trying to tell, and what kind of emotional atmosphere works best for the story.

The persona develops from the personality and attitude of the narrator, which are expressed by the narrator’s choice of words and incidents. These in turn depend on the point of view of the story.

First-person point of view is usually subjective: we learn the narrator’s thoughts, feelings, and reactions to events. In first-person objective, however, the narrator tells us only what people said and did, without comment.

Other first-person modes include:

¶the observer-narrator, outside the main story (examples: Mr. Lockwood in Wuthering Heights, Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby)

¶detached autobiography (narrator looking back on long-past events)

¶multiple narrators (first-person accounts by several characters)

¶interior monologue (narrator recounts the story as a memory; stream of consciousness is an extreme form of this narrative)

¶dramatic monologue (narrator tells story out loud without major interruption)

¶letters or diary (narrator writes down events as they happen; narrative told through letters is also known as the epistolary novel)

If the point of view is first-person, questions about the persona are simple: the character narrating the story has a particular personality and attitude, which is plausibly expressed by the way he or she describes events.

The second-person mode is rare: You knocked on the door. You went inside. Very few writers feel the need for it, and still fewer use it effectively.

If the point of view is third-person limited, persona again depends on the single character through whose eyes we witness the story. You may go inside the character’s mind and tell us how that character thinks and feels, or you may describe outside events in terms the character would use. Readers like this point of view because they know whom to “invest” in or identify with.

In third-person objective, we have no entry to anyone’s thoughts or feelings. The author simply describes, without emotion or editorializing, what the characters say and do. The author’s persona here is almost non-existent. Readers may be unsure whose fate they should care about, but it can be very powerful precisely because it invites the reader to supply the emotion that the persona does not. This is the persona of Icelandic sagas, which inspired not only Ernest Hemingway but a whole generation of “hard-boiled” writers.

If the point of view is third-person omniscient, however, the author's persona can develop in any of several directions.

1. “Episodically limited.” Whoever is the point of view for a particular scene determines the persona. An archbishop sees and describes events from his particular point of view, while a pickpocket does so quite differently. So the narrator, in a scene from the archbishop’s point of view, has a persona quite different from that of the pickpocket: a different vocabulary, a different set of values, a different set of priorities. (As a general rule, point of view should not change during a scene. So if an archbishop is the point of view in a scene involving him and a pickpocket, we shouldn’t suddenly switch to the pickpocket’s point of view until we’ve resolved the scene and moved on to another scene.)

2. “Occasional interruptor.” The author intervenes from time to time to supply necessary information, but otherwise stays in the background. The dialogue, thoughts and behavior of the characters supply all other information the reader needs.

3. “Editorial commentator.” The author’s persona has a distinct attitude toward the story’s characters and events, and frequently comments on them. The editorial commentator may be a character in the story, often with a name, but is usually at some distance from the main events; in some cases, we may even have an editorial commentator reporting the narrative of someone else about events involving still other people. The editorial commentator is not always reliable; he or she may lie to us, or misunderstand the true significance of events.

Third-person omniscient gives you the most freedom to develop the story, and it works especially well in stories with complex plots or large settings where we must use multiple viewpoints to tell the story. It can, however, cause the reader to feel uncertain about whom to identify with in the story. If you are going to skip from one point of view to another, start doing so early in the story, before the reader has fully identified with the original point of view.

The author’s persona can influence the reader’s reaction by helping the reader to feel close to or distant from the characters. Three major hazards arise from careless use of the persona:

1. Sentimentality. The author’s editorial rhetoric tries to evoke an emotional response that the story's events cannot evoke by themselves—something like a cheerleader trying to win applause for a team that doesn’t deserve it. A particular problem for the “editorial commentator.”

2. Mannerism. The author’s persona seems more important than the story itself, and the author keeps reminding us of his or her presence through stylistic flamboyance, quirks of diction, or outright editorializing about the characters and events of the story. Also a problem for the editorial commentator. However, if the point of view is first person, and the narrator is a person given to stylistic flamboyance, quirks of diction, and so on, then the problem disappears; the persona is simply that of a rather egotistical individual who likes to show off.

3. Frigidity. The persona’s excessive objectivity trivializes the events of the story, suggesting that the characters’ problems need not be taken seriously: a particular hazard for “hardboiled” fiction in the objective mode, whether first person or third person.

Verb tense can also affect the narrative style of the story. Most stories use the past tense:

I knocked on the door. She pulled out her gun.

This is usually quite adequate although flashbacks can cause awkwardness:

I had knocked on the door. She had pulled out her gun.

A little of that goes a long way.

Be careful to stay consistently in one verb tense unless your narrator is a person who might switch tenses:

So I went to see my probation officer, and she tells me I can't hang with my old buddies no more.

Some writers achieve a kind of immediacy through use of the present tense:

I knock on the door. She pulls out her gun.

We don’t feel anyone knows the outcome of events because they are occurring as we read, in “real time.” Some writers also enjoy the present tense because it seems “arty” or experimental.

But most readers of genre fiction don’t enjoy the present tense, so editors are often reluctant to let their authors use it. I learned that the hard way by using present tense in my first novel, The Empire of Time; it was enough to keep the manuscript in editorial limbo for months, and the final offer to publish was contingent on changing to past tense. Guess how long I agonized over that artistic decision!

Questions? Comments?

Comments

[Robert Jackson]

Mr. Killian.

It is a mistake to believe that the opening chapter can be successful in a third-person omniscient narrative, without introducing the protagonist and without a single line of dialogue until the very end of the chapter?

[Crawford Kilian]

Sure, it could be successful. All the "rules" are made to be broken, but some writers can get away with it and some can't.

The first of the Smiley novels by John Le Carre, has a potted biography of George Smiley as its first chapter. It works brilliantly, but if I'd tried it, I'd have failed. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in Love in the Time of Cholera, forgets all about "show, don't tell," and tells us what's going on. It's a tour de force, a tightwire act without even the wire.

Lesser mortals like most of us can do better work by obeying the rules.

[Alice]

This was a wonderful find for me, 300 pages into my first novel. I was confused about what the difference between 3rd person narrative and 3rd person omniscient and now feel I have a much clearer understanding. Thank you so much and... keep on writing!

[Nana]

Very pleased to have run across your web site! Am book marking it for reference.
Nana

[juan ignacio calvo]

Mr. Kilian:
What can you tell about the narrative voice on the World Wide Web?

[Crawford Kilian]

That's a good but difficult question. Much of the Web's narrative voice is first-person, present tense, especially in the blog world. In many other cases the voice is that of transcribed print.

Almost all of the Web is "objective" in the sense that we see and hear only what others say and show; we don't have access to their inner thoughts and feelings; we must deduce them from what people say.

That's true even for the most intimate blogs. No matter how much people may tell us about their awful ex-spouses or the power of this morning's hangover, all they can really tell us is what they wish to make public. Only inadvertently can they expose their inner selves.

[Mike Jamieson]

Hi there Crawford
superb site and valuable advice to novice writers such as myself. Could I open a discussion into what seems to be a 'new wave' label of "Emerging Narrative" fiction. Could you define this and could you give some examples?

[Mike Jamieson]

Hi there Crawford
superb site and valuable advice to novice writers such as myself. Could I open a discussion into what seems to be a 'new wave' label of "Emerging Narrative" fiction. Could you define this and could you give some examples?

[Mike Jamieson]

Hi there Crawford
superb site and valuable advice to novice writers such as myself. Could I open a discussion into what seems to be a 'new wave' label of "Emerging Narrative" fiction. Could you define this and could you give some examples?

[Robert Jackson]

Today after considering more on the subject of the third person narrative style, and more specifically opening a novel with much description and hardly a lick of dialogue I decided to do a goggle search. I was surprised to find myself being quoted in regard to the subject on this web site. Of course who can ever remember all the places they have posted on the internet… right?

To anyone who may read this, I remain as firm now in my belief that a narrative style less tons of dialogue is a good thing. Every writer has their own approach; their own voice; their own method. And to those that would dismiss the narrative style with limited use of dialogue as being a substandard vehicle to story telling, well I would just plain and simple have to say that—my friend you are misinformed. Many successful authors, including Fredrick Forsyth have produced many best sellers using this style of writing.

Some of you on the net, who are members of and post on the writers forums may better know me as Elmo Jackson.

So next time someone insist that dialogue is the key to a successful novel, I suggest they take a second look around.

Thanks for the opportunity to post,

Robert Jackson
(Elmo Jackson_

My updated e-mail address is [email protected].