Types of Narrative
Third person omniscient narrator: A narrator who is assumed to know everything
Free indirect style: Third person narration in which a character’s thoughts and feelings seem to
be directly expressed, freely taking on the views and often the language of the character.
Narratives often slide between conventional third-person narration and this style, moving from a
more detached voice to one that is more intimately connected to one character or another.
Inadequate narrator: A narrator who doesn’t seem to understand as much about what’s
happening as the reader.
Unreliable narrator: A narrator who is perhaps self-deceiving or who cannot be trusted to give
a version of events that is to be believed.
Self-conscious narrator: Reminds the reader that what they are reading is fiction, dispelling
any illusion that the characters are real people etc.
Intrusive narrator: A narrator who, telling the story in the third person, intervenes in the
narrative, with a comment in the first person.
Multiple voices: More than one narrative voice used in a single text. Can be first or third person
or a mixture of the two.
First person narrative: A narrator who speaks as “I,” often a character who plays a role in the
story, although it may not be his or her own story.
Focaliser: In a third person narrative, the character from whose perspective the action is seen.
Stream of consciousness: A narrative style that imitates the qualities of thoughts and feelings,
making the reader feel as if they’re inside someone’s head. The grammar and structure suggest
the random and fragmentary nature of thought. In the third person, it’s an extreme version of
free indirect style. In the first person, it’s an extreme version of interior monologue.
Second person address: A narrative voice that directly addresses the reader as “you.” It’s rare
for a whole text to do this, as it’s very hard to maintain.
Interior monologue: First person, as though the narrator is verbalising their thoughts as they
occur.
Indirect narration: The narrative voice telling us what happened.
