Writer's Blog Seguir blog

Choose the correct type of narrator for your story

The narrator is the most important character in any narrative, on which the characters of the story depend. Although the narrator does not necessarily need to have a human identity, his behavior, type of language and dramatic reach constitute an elementary point to obtain the credibility of the work. Deciding who will be the narrator or the voice of the narrative text, after defining the argument, is one of the first steps for the construction of a story in which a well-stitched and coherent story is told. In short, the narrator is the voice that tells the reader what happens in the story. Presents the characters and places the action or sequence of events in a space and at a specific time.

It may seem that there are thousands of options when choosing who will tell our story but the truth is that there are only 3, which are: The character narrator (1st person POV (Point of View), the ambiguous narrator (2nd person POV) and the omniscient narrator (3rd person POV).

1.- The character narrator: It's the one that narrates from the first grammatical person. He is a narrator whose possibilities are focused on the reach of the senses that any ordinary human being possesses. This means that you have limited knowledge of what happened, happens and will occur in the story. However, this limitation is never seen as a defect, on the contrary, it is part of its charm and credibility when narrating.

His highly emotional tone is the result of a particular psychological complexity that is the model of the face of any character. When this type of narrator is chosen, readers are given the feeling that they are dealing with a being of flesh and blood, with doubts, conflicts and decisions that may be a reflection of ours (as writers) or of the reader itself.

This type of voice creates a warm closeness to the facts, through which you can come to understand our own essence and quite possibly that of others. Telling a story from this narrator is to tell it from the "I" giving the feeling that you are telling a story that may or may not be of yourself and consequently that feeling will be reflected directly in the reader. The character narrator has all the limitations that people have, they can not know what other people think or feel (unless they tell them), they can not exhaustively know the past, the present or the future because their faculties they prevent, however, their truth is more credible and closer by the simple fact that their experiences are connected with events in a realistic and sensitive way.

2 .- The ambiguous narrator: This narrator is a kind of voice of conscience, arguably a voice hidden behind a second grammatical person who uses "you" as a kind of mental resonance in the psyche of a character. Its scope is not necessarily limited to the individual but it does not reach the broad spectrum of omniscience either.

It is typical of the characters who talk to themselves as if they were addressing someone else. Their special tone is usually used with protagónicos that suffer from some disorder or are strongly focused on their own emotions and knowledge. These narrators are usually very valuable in plots where one or more characters are persecuted or obsessed by some obsession. Although this narrator is not one of the most used, his well-used force can yield the best results according to the plot we set out to develop.

3.- The omniscient narrator: It is a voice that relates from the third person, which occupies an independent space and does not necessarily have emotional links with the story that narrates. You can explore the past, present and future thanks to its long reach, which gives it the power to penetrate the consciences of them and unravel the thoughts of each one.

Although this narrator knows everything, has the disadvantage of a certain coldness and perspective outside when telling a story. In short, telling a story in the third person, is telling the story of someone else giving the reader the feeling of seeing the facts instead of living them, that is, you can tell the difference between seeing and feeling. Because it is one thing to feel that you who happen to you, be it with joy, sadness, etc. and another thing is to see what feels or happens to a certain character. That is why the reader may be predisposed to the fact that the writing may be manipulated by the narrator and that perhaps the narrative suffers from a certain artificiality.

Master this type of voice will have the great advantage of exploring situations and experiences that an ordinary person could not given their human limitations.

Once focused on our argument, the design of the story itself will suggest the type of narrator that is most convenient to communicate the facts that we have proposed to reach readers through the written word. It will depend on the story, its point of view and the spaces in which the plot takes place, which narrator will be chosen to show the speech as a spontaneous and natural event in tune with the interactions of the characters and the world itself that all Well-crafted fiction recreates itself.