Narrative Voice

PERSPECTIVE AND WRITING

What is it?

• Narrative voice describes the way that an author has decided to write their story. There are several factors that all writers must consider when they write fiction:

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• What tense will it be written in?
• What perspective will it be written from?
• What kind of language will they use?

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REFLECT:

What is tense?

What is perspective?

How can language differ?

Tense

• Identify which tense each of the above are written in, and consider the ‘distance’ each one puts between the reader and when the story takes place.

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James felt a cold child. The wind had sent it through him.

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James feels a cold chill as the wind whips up around him.

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As the wind howled all around him, James felt a cold chill.

• Generally, we write in past, present or future tense. It is very difficult to sustain an engaging piece of fiction with future tense, so we’re going to ignore that one for now.

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Perspective

• There are four major kinds of perspective:
• * First person
• * Second person
• * Third person limited
• * Third person omniscient

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• Draw a mind-map that explains what each of these perspectives are. Create some examples to help demonstrate your ideas.

Omniscient means ‘all-knowing’. As in a god-like perspective.

Language Choices

Once an author has settled on the tense and perspective they’ll be using, they will then think about the kind of language that best fits their story. Some examples:

• Colloquial language –
• Dry, formal language –
• Heavily descriptive language –
• Simplistic language –
• Angry, shocking language –
• Emotionally detached –

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What kind of characters and perspectives would these choices suit best?

A few extra tricky things �

• First person narrator variations:
• Are they subjective? (giving their own opinion about things)
• Are they objective? (just a neutral bystander)
• Are they there while things happen, or are they just relating a story they heard?

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Are they a reliable narrator? Some famous books are written in first person and feature unreliable narrators. These are characters whose perspective of the world may be twisted or untrustworthy due to dishonesty or trauma, or they may be shielded from the ‘real’ story due to their age or mental capacity. A famous example is Catcher in the Rye. A good film example of something similar is The Usual Suspects.