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Fictional Narrative Basics - Point of View
Unit Completion Date: End of Week 5
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In choosing to tell a story in a particular person, you may already be setting limits on the types of information your narrator can communicate to the reader. For instance, in all but the most unusual of cases, if you choose to tell a story in the first person, then you are limiting yourself to the thoughts, observations, and feelings of that one character. If you choose to tell the story in the third person, then you may have access to the inner lives of more than one character, or you may choose to access the inner lives of none of your characters and move the story forward on external description alone. This delimitation of narrative access is discussed as the "perspective" element of point of view. Though sometimes definitions vary, I divide perspectives into the following categories:
- Limited, in which the narrative voice is strictly limited to the internal world, thoughts and observations of one character. First person narration is limited by definition. Third person may be limited, providing the third person narration does not include commentary from outside the chosen character (i.e. directly from the narrative voice itself).
- Multiple, in which the narrative voice is limited to the thoughts, observations and feelings of a set number of characters, but again no commentary is provided directly by the narrative voice itself. This can be accomplished in first person using multiple first person narrators that control different sections of the story. A third person narrator can move directly from one character's thoughts to another's in the middle of the action. Larry McMurtry does this in the Lonesome Dove series with great skill.
- Subjective, in which commentary, thoughts, and opinions are provided by one character as well as the narrator. This is by definition a third person perspective that requires the narrator to be separate from the character in question.
- Objective, in which the narrator is limited to action, dialogue and description external to all characters, and provides no outside commentary. This is sometimes referred to as "movie camera" perspective.
- Omniscient, in which the narrator has access to virtually any piece of information including all character thoughts, historical information, insight into events taking place in other parts of the characters' fictional world that they do not know about. Except for extreme cases this is a third person point of view. There is a wide range of options available so far as inclusion and exclusion of character thoughts in the omniscient perspective.
- Reminiscent, in which the narrator is removed in time from the action of the story, and so knows the events that follow the action of the story, and can provide a perspective on the action informed by memory and the passage of time. This is usually done in the first person.
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