

Free indirect style:Third person narration in which a characters thoughts. I’ll explain this in more detail later on. Third person omniscient narrator:A narrator who is assumed to know everything.

That is better achieved when the protagonist himself (or herself) narrates the story. The omniscient narrator can control what every character thinks or feels, but this all-knowing capacity prevents the readers from looking at the facts through the hero’s eyes. He can go back and forth in time and omit unnecessary events. A story written from the perspective of a single person often feels more intimate, because the reader has direct, unfiltered access to the thoughts, emotions, and perceptions of a single character. This type of narrator can move instantly from scene to scene and from setting to setting. Therefore, he can sometimes be identified with the author, particularly if he makes value judgments or subjective remarks. The omniscient narrator tells the story from the outside. This element of reliability can be a good choice for novels set in a fantasy world. He/she is reliable.Īs the omniscient narrator has access to every detail of the story, his testimony is much more plausible than that of, say, a witness character. As a result, not much is left to the readers’ imagination. The omniscient narrator interprets what is happening, makes judgments, and thoroughly analyzes the characters’ actions and behaviors. As such, the readers have more information about what’s going on in the story than the protagonists do themselves. The omniscient narrator knows everything – even what the characters are thinking and feeling. Let’s take a careful look at the omniscient narrator’s features:ġ.

The use of this omniscient point of view was very common in nineteenth-century novels. In addition, he or she is able to predict the future and make assumptions and judgments. In this second post of the series, you’ll learn more about the all-knowing and all-seeing omniscient narrator who conveys the facts from a third-person point of view and doesn’t take part in the story.Īs the name suggests, this god-like narrator knows everything about the characters and the plot.
