Part
Narration
You might say: point of view, POV, the narrator
Who tells the story and from where. Burroway puts it as three questions: who speaks, who sees, and how much they know.
- What it does
- Controls what the reader can know and how close they feel to the characters.
- Ask
- Whose eyes, and how close to them?
- Trouble
- The reader is unsure whose head they are in.
What to look for
- Whose eyes see each scene
- A clear limit on how much the narrator knows
Parts
- Tense: Whether the narration says “she ran” or “she runs”.
- Narrative voice: The personality you hear in the narration: word choice, rhythm, attitude and how much the narrator comments.
- Narrative person: The grammar of the narrator: I, you, or she.
- Psychic distance: How close the reader stands to a character’s mind.
- Viewpoint character: The character whose senses and thoughts the reader shares in a scene.
Sources
- Bowie State University, Understanding Point of View, definitions and types
A narrator’s position in relation to the story being told.
Use it on your project
teardown-apply: hold "Narration" (narration) from the teardown at https://teardownatlas.com/fiction-writing/ against my project
Paste it into a coding agent that has the teardown skills.
An AI agent wrote this map with the teardown skill. It can contain errors: check the sources before you rely on a part. About and legal