Editing Narration (section)

== Point of view ==
An ongoing debate has persisted regarding the nature of narrative point of view. A variety of different theoretical approaches have sought to define point of view in terms of person, perspective, voice, consciousness and focus.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Chamberlain |first1=Daniel Frank |title=Narrative Perspective in Fiction: A Phenomenological Meditation of Reader, Text, and World |year=1990 |publisher=ITHAKA |jstor=10.3138/j.ctt2ttgv0 |isbn=9780802058386 }}</ref> Narrative perspective is the position and character of the storyteller, in relation to the narrative itself.<ref>{{cite book|editor=James McCracken|title=The Oxford English Dictionary |url=http://www.oed.com/|access-date=16 October 2011|edition=Online|year=2011|publisher=Oxford University Press }}</ref> There is, for instance, a common distinction between first-person and third-person narrative, which [[Gérard Genette]] refers to as intradiegetic and extradiegetic narrative, respectively.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method |last=Genette |first=Gérard |publisher=[[Cornell University Press]] |year=1980 |isbn=0-8014-9259-9 |location=Ithaca |url=https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801410994/narrative-discourse/ |page=228 |others=Foreword by Jonathan Culler |lccn=79013499 |ol=8222857W |author-mask=0 |access-date=2023-10-04 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231004203129/https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801410994/narrative-discourse/ |archive-date=2023-10-04 |url-status=live |translator-last=Lewin |translator-first=Jane E.}}</ref> 

===Literary theory===
The Russian semiotician [[Boris Uspenskij]] identifies five planes on which point of view is expressed in a narrative: spatial, temporal, psychological, phraseological and ideological.<ref>[[Boris Uspensky]], ''A Poetics of Composition: The Structure of the Artistic Text and Typology of Compositional Form'', trans. Valentina Zavarin and Susan Wittig (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1973).</ref>  The American literary critic Susan Sniader Lanser also develops these categories.<ref>Susan Sniader Lanser, ''The Narrative Act: Point of View in Prose Fiction'' (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1981).</ref>

The psychological point of view focuses on the characters' behaviors. Lanser concludes that this is "an extremely complex aspect of point of view, for it encompasses the broad question of the narrator's distance or affinity to each character and event…represented in the text".<ref>Lanser, 201–02.</ref> 

The ideological point of view is not only "the most basic aspect of point of view" but also the "least accessible to formalization, for its analysis relies to a degree, on intuitive understanding".<ref>[[Boris Uspensky|Uspensky]], 8.</ref>  This aspect of the point of view focuses on the norms, values, beliefs and Weltanschauung (worldview) of the narrator or a character. The ideological point of view may be stated outright—what Lanser calls "explicit ideology"—or it may be embedded at "deep-structural" levels of the text and not easily identified.<ref>Lanser, 216–17.</ref>

=== First-person ===
{{Main article|First-person narrative}}
A first-person point of view reveals the story through an openly self-referential and participating narrator. First person creates a close relationship between the narrator and reader, by referring to the viewpoint character with first person pronouns like ''I'' and ''me'' (as well as ''we'' and ''us'', whenever the narrator is part of a larger group).<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Wyile|first=Andrea Schwenke|date=1999|title=Expanding the View of First-Person Narration|journal=Children's Literature in Education|language=en|volume=30|issue=3|pages=185–202|doi=10.1023/a:1022433202145|s2cid=142607561|issn=0045-6713}}</ref> 

=== Second-person ===
{{Category see also|Second-person narrative fiction}}
The second-person point of view is a point of view similar to first-person in its possibilities of unreliability. The narrator recounts their own experience but adds distance (often ironic) through the use of the second-person pronoun ''you''. This is not a direct address to any given reader even if it purports to be, such as in the metafictional ''[[If on a winter's night a traveler]]'' by [[Italo Calvino]]. Other notable examples of second-person include the novel ''[[Bright Lights, Big City (novel)|Bright Lights, Big City]]'' by [[Jay McInerney]], the short fiction of [[Lorrie Moore]] and [[Junot Díaz]], the short story ''[[The Egg (2009 short story)|The Egg]]'' by [[Andy Weir]] and [[Second Thoughts (Butor novel)|''Second Thoughts'']] by [[Michel Butor]]. Sections of [[N. K. Jemisin]]'s ''[[The Fifth Season (novel)|The Fifth Season]]'' and its sequels are also narrated in the second person.
{{quote|You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy.|Opening lines of [[Jay McInerney]]'s ''[[Bright Lights, Big City (novel)|Bright Lights, Big City]]'' (1984)}}

[[Mohsin Hamid]]'s ''[[The Reluctant Fundamentalist (novel)|The Reluctant Fundamentalist]]'' and [[Gamebook]]s, including the American ''[[Choose Your Own Adventure]]'' and British ''[[Fighting Fantasy]]'' series (the two largest examples of the genre), are not true second-person narratives, because there is an implicit narrator (in the case of the novel) or writer (in the case of the series) addressing an audience. This device of the addressed reader is a near-ubiquitous feature of the game-related medium, regardless of the wide differences in target reading ages and [[role-playing game]] system complexity. Similarly, text-based [[interactive fiction]], such as ''[[Colossal Cave Adventure]]'' and ''[[Zork]]'', conventionally has descriptions that address the user, telling the character what they are seeing and doing. This practice is also encountered occasionally in text-based segments of graphical games, such as those from [[Spiderweb Software]], which make ample use of pop-up text boxes with character and location descriptions. Most of [[Charles Stross]]'s novel ''[[Halting State]]'' is written in second person as an allusion to this style.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-441-01498-9|title=Halting State, Review|work=Publishers Weekly|date=1 October 2007}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/05/and-another-thing.html|title=And another thing|author=Charles Stross}}</ref>

=== {{anchor|third}}Third-person<!-- Section linked from [[Horus Heresy (novels)]] --> ===
{{redirect|Third-person perspective|the graphical perspective in video games|Third-person view}}
In the third-person narrative mode, the narration refers to all characters with [[Personal pronoun|third person pronouns]] like ''he'' or ''she'' and never first- or second-person pronouns.<ref name="Ricoeur1990">{{cite book |author=Paul Ricoeur |title=Time and Narrative |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vjBw9NuSkuEC&pg=PA89 |date=15 September 1990 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-71334-2 |pages=89–}}</ref> 

==== <span class="anchor" id="Third-person, omniscient"></span><span class="anchor" id="omni3"></span> Omniscient or limited<!-- Section linked from [[Horus Heresy (novels)]] --> ====
''Omniscient'' point of view is presented by a narrator with an overarching perspective, seeing and knowing everything that happens within the world of the story, including what each of the characters is thinking and feeling. The inclusion of an omniscient narrator is typical in nineteenth-century fiction, including works by [[Charles Dickens]], [[Leo Tolstoy]] and [[George Eliot]].<ref>{{citation |last1=Herman |first1=David |last2=Jahn |first2=Manfred |last3=Ryan |title=Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory |year=2005 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-0-415-28259-8 |page=442}}</ref>

Some works of fiction, especially novels, employ multiple points of view, with different points of view presented in discrete sections or chapters, including ''[[The English Patient]]'' by [[Michael Ondaatje]], ''[[The Emperor's Children]]'' by [[Claire Messud]] and the ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' series by [[George R. R. Martin]]. ''[[The Home and the World]]'', written in 1916 by [[Rabindranath Tagore]], is another example of a book with three different point-of-view characters. In ''[[The Heroes of Olympus]]'' series, written by [[Rick Riordan]], the point of view alternates between characters at intervals.

The ''[[Harry Potter]]'' series focuses on the protagonist for much of the seven novels, but sometimes deviates to other characters, particularly in the opening chapters of later novels in the series, which switch from the view of the [[Eponym|eponymous]] Harry to other characters.{{cn|reason=This statement generalizes across all novels, so it needs to be supported with a reliable source. Alternatively, narrow the focus to "Half-Blood Prince" and expand the discussion to other chapters of the novel.|date=May 2025}}

For example, at the beginning of Chapter One of [[Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince|''Half-Blood Prince'']], an omniscient narrator describes the [[Muggle]] Prime Minister as "sitting alone in his office, reading a long memo that was slipping through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning behind."<ref>{{Cite book|title=Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince|last=Rowling|first=J.K.|publisher=Bloomsbury|year=2005|isbn=0-7475-8110-X|location=London|chapter=Chapter One: The Other Minister|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_074758110x/page/n9/mode/2up?q=%22Prime+Minister%22}}</ref>

Examples of ''Limited'' or close third-person point of view, confined to one character's perspective, include J.M. Coetzee's ''Disgrace''.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Mountford |first1=Peter |title=Third-Person Limited: Analyzing Fiction's Most Flexible Point of View |url=https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-fiction/why-third-person-limited-point-of-view |newspaper=Writer's Digest |access-date=28 July 2020}}</ref>

==== <span class="anchor" id="Third-person, subjective"></span> Subjective or objective ====
''Subjective'' point of view is when the narrator conveys the thoughts, feelings and opinions of one or more characters.<ref name=Dynes>{{cite book |last1=Dynes |first1=Barbara |title=Masterclasses in Creative Writing |date=2014 |publisher=Constable & Robinson |location=United Kingdom |isbn=978-1-47211-003-9 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=s0jBBAAAQBAJ&dq=third-person+subjective+objective&pg=PT37 |access-date=28 July 2020 |chapter=Using Third Person}}</ref> ''Objective'' point of view employs a narrator who tells a story without describing any character's thoughts, opinions, or feelings; instead, it gives an [[Objectivity (philosophy)|objective]], unbiased point of view.<ref name=Dynes/>

=== Alternating- or multiple-person ===
{{Main|Multiperspectivity}}
While the tendency for novels (or other narrative works) is to adopt a single point of view throughout the entire novel, some authors have utilized other points of view that, for example, alternate between different first-person narrators or alternate between a first- and a third-person narrative mode. The ten books of the ''[[Pendragon: Journal of an Adventure through Time and Space|Pendragon]]'' adventure series, by [[D. J. MacHale]], switch back and forth between a first-person perspective (handwritten journal entries) of the main character along his journey as well as a disembodied third-person perspective focused on his friends back home.<ref name="White">{{Cite web
| last = White | first = Claire E.
| year = 2004
|title=D.J. MacHale Interview|url=https://www.writerswrite.com/journal/dj-machale-10041|access-date=2023-01-25|publisher=Writers Write|work=The Internet Writing Journal}}</ref>

In Indigenous American communities, narratives and storytelling are often told by a number of elders in the community. In this way, the stories are never static because they are shaped by the relationship between narrator and audience. Thus, each individual story may have countless variations. Narrators often incorporate minor changes in the story in order to tailor the story to different audiences.<ref>Piquemal, 2003. From Native North American Oral Traditions to Western Literacy: Storytelling in Education.</ref>

The use of multiple narratives in a story is not simply a stylistic choice, but rather an interpretive one that offers insight into the development of a larger social identity and the impact that has on the overarching narrative, as explained by Lee Haring.<ref name=":0">{{cite journal |last=Haring |first=Lee |date=2004-08-27 |title=Framing in Oral Narrative |journal=Marvels & Tales |language=en |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=229–245 |doi=10.1353/mat.2004.0035 |s2cid=143097105 |issn=1536-1802}}</ref> 

Haring provides an example from the Arabic folktales of ''[[One Thousand and One Nights]]'' to illustrate how framing was used to loosely connect each story to the next, where each story was enclosed within the larger narrative. Additionally, Haring draws comparisons between ''Thousand and One Nights'' and the oral storytelling observed in parts of rural [[Ireland]], islands of the Southwest Indian Ocean and African cultures such as [[Madagascar]].<blockquote>"I'll tell you what I'll do," said the smith. "I'll fix your sword for you tomorrow, if you tell me a story while I'm doing it." The speaker was an Irish storyteller in 1935, framing one story in another (O'Sullivan 75, 264). The moment recalls the Thousand and One Nights, where the story of "The Envier and the Envied" is enclosed in the larger story told by the Second Kalandar (Burton 1: 113-39), and many stories are enclosed in others."<ref name=":0"/></blockquote>