Viewpoint & Voice

• First person narrative


  ‘I’, ‘we’
• Second person narrative

  'You'
• Omniscient third person narrative

  all-knowing, all-seeing narration across time and place and character
• Over the shoulder narrative

  3rd person narration which identifies with focal characters and their thought processes
• Intrusive/reflexive narrative 


  narration which comments on its own processes (meta-narration)
• Unreliable narrators

  narrations which are self-contradictory, slippery
• Multiple narrators 


  multiple viewpoints and voices
• Embedded Narrators 


  the use of other narrators within the main narration
• Direct speech


  speech marks, tagging (‘she said’)
• Indirect speech

  reported speech (who frames it?)
• Free direct speech 


  no description or tagging (reads more like a dramatic dialogue)
• Free indirect speech/thought 


  character’s perspective embedded into the narration, expressing their thoughts and feelings through third person
• Stream of consciousness

  an imitation of thought and feeling, making the reader feel as if they are directly part of the consciousness of a character. The grammar and syntax suggest the random, repetitive and fragmentary nature of thought