I’ve kind of sort of done a post on dialogue, but I’ve never done one on the narrator.
Now, narration acts as a sort of director for the story. Things that the characters won’t say in dialogue are things that are told through narration. For instance, things like the setting, the reason the characters are in the setting, the situation the characters are in and why, etc. may be told through narration and there are three types of narration called point of view which are first, second, and third. The most common and most accepted are first and third, but I’ll do a post on POV later.
Generally, the narrator takes on the overall voice and tone of the novel and generally in the head or perspective of the main character. Why? Well, let’s take any random fiction novel. How about a humorous romantic novel with a quirky cute female lead who speaks before she thinks, but in a cute ditzy way? Now, imagine how the dialogue of that would go, the things this character would possibly say and how she would say them. I’m thinking she’s a pretty casual character, very polite though. Now imagine that the narration in your head the voice of a narrator, but not just any. Imagine a middle-aged woman with her hair pulled in a tight bun speaking proper English, no contractions or slang, with a distinct and proper British accent. It would seem weird wouldn’t it?
That’s why generally, narration matches the tone of your novel. It’s a little more formal than your dialogue, but barely. In fact, it doesn’t have to change at all. The difference is that you find out a little more info in narration, things that aren’t said in dialogue.
For instance, you can tell what the character is seeing or what’s happening through narration. Your narration is also like your stage director. It kind of let’s you know what’s important for you to pay attention to or it can even mislead you and point you in the wrong direction.
But getting back to the voice of narration. In first person, your narrator is the person who’s point of view we’re in. In twilight, we see and hear everything Bella does. If she get’s distracted and misses something, so does the reader.
In third person, limited that is, we get the story from the point of view of a third party telling the story. The thing about third person narration though is that it is still limited to what’s happening around one character or in that scene. In other words, in the middle of limited third person, the narrator can’t suddenly talk about something happening on the other side of town that’s directly related to the character’s situation but the characters don’t know it.
Third person limited is limited to everything happening around the characters in a scene, which means if out MC is distracted and doesn’t notice the person creeping into the room, the narrator still can, as long as it’s in the room. This voice is the one that though can get in the head and talk in the voice of the MC (and sometimes other characters), usually takes on the overall tone and voice of the novel (I’ll tell you what the voice of a novel is later).
Omniscient is a third or first person voice, whose narrator knows about everything that’s going on in that world no matter where the character is and may talk about the reaction of the characters in hindsight, tell what signs and symbols mean for later etc. The thing is though that the omniscient narrator doesn’t have to reveal everything they know. You’ll hear this voice a lot in memoirs, someone reflecting back on events that happened and since they know what happened and how it happened they may reveal as such like so “This happened and it was because of this, although I didn’t know it at the time…”
Also, unlike third person limited, the narrator doesn't have to dip in someone's head to show their point of view. They already know what everyone's thinking.
So that’s my little tip on narration and if I weren’t in such a rush, I would talk about it more, but alas, I have to go cook dinner… It’s my mom’s fault this is late. I wanted to post this morning but she wanted to finish my hair.
