NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES

INTRODUCTION
What is a narrative (= un récit)?
“A narrative is a story, whether told in prose or verse, involving events, characters, and what the
characters say and do. Some literary forms such as the novel and short story in prose, and the epic and
romance in verse, are explicit narratives that are told by a narrator. In drama, the narrative is not told,
but evolves by means of the direct presentation on stage of the actions and speeches of the characters.
It should be noted that there is an implicit narrative element even in many lyric poems.” W. H.
Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms (1999).

→ Narratives are therefore not limited to prose fiction, just as prose does not always have to do
with the telling of stories, although we often associate narratives with novels and short stories. For
the purpose of this course, we will mainly refer to narrative techniques in connection to prose fiction,
but it is important to show a well-thought use of the terms and their application to various genres.

Narratology is concerned with the more theoretical and practical features of narratives in all literary
forms. These often include reflections on structure, speech presentation, focalization, etc., the most
recurrent of which will be presented here.

To analyze a narrative (récits) several aspects are worth looking at and are presented in the
following document, which is largely based on Françoise Grellet, A Handbook of Literary Terms. See
p. 71-136 for more vocabulary, explanations and examples.

I. THE STORY AND THE PLOT

Plot versus story:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a
narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. ‘The king died and then the queen died”, is a
story. ‘The king died, and then the queen died of grief,’ is a plot. The time- sequence is preserved, but
the sense of causality overshadows it. […] Consider the death of the queen. If it is in a story we say
‘and then?’. If it is in a plot we ask ‘why?’ That is the fundamental difference […].” E. M. Forster,
Aspects fo the Novel (1927).

Plot / Causal structure:

• What is the main plot(-line)? Is there a double plot? A subplot/secondary plot?

• How is the plot presented? Does it follow a linear,

episodic structure? Or a dramatic one? Is there an
exposition or does it start in medias res/verba? Is the plot
marked by peripeteia? Is there a turning point in the
story? A climax? A catastrophe? A final twist? A
happy/tragic denouement/resolution?

• Can you recognize a structure of

embedding/framing/nesting (=enchâssement)? Can you
talk of embedded stories (=histoires enchâssées)?
• If several plots can be identified, what is the link between them? Are they set in counterpoint? In
parallel? Does the inset story create an effect of mise en abyme? (ex: Hamlet and his play “Mouse
trap”)
Story / Sequence of events:
• What is the span of time covered by the passage?
• Is the time-sequence chronological/continuous? Or is it disrupted/broken up/reshuffled?
• Among the time-shifts deviating from the chronological order, can you identify a gap / an ellipsis
(pl. ellipses)? Missing links in the sequence of events? Does the story include a flashback / an
analepsis (pl. analepses) or a flash-forward / a prolepsis (pl. prolepses)?
• Is the story retrospective? Is it a case of ulterior narration? Is it rather a projection into the future?
A case of anterior narration? Or else can you identify a simultaneous narration?
• Do some elements foreshadow/anticipate/adumbrate a later situation? Or do they echo past
happenings?
• What is the pace/rhythm/tempo of the narrative? Are narrated and narrating time
synchronous/asynchronous? Is there an acceleration (speeding up) or deceleration (slowing down)?
Are the events described in detail or merely summarized?

Checklist: What particular markers can you pay attention to in order to describe plot and story?
→ tenses/aspects, punctuation, connectives/adverbials, lexical fields, imagery

II. THE SETTING

• What is the larger setting / context /framework (historical period? Economic / religious / political
/artistic background…)?
• What more particular locale/scenery/landscape can you identify ?
• What sort of atmosphere/mood/ambience does the narrative rest on ?

Note: if remarks about the general “atmosphere” can be useful in some cases, you need to justify them
with precise examples and not insist too much on what can sometimes seem like a vague,
impressionistic comment.
• What function does the setting play? Is it merely a distant backdrop? Or does it play an active part in
the narrative, as a character of some sort, or in its influence on the characters? Does the setting need to
be read metaphorically? Does it reveal interpretative clues that help you understand the plot?
• How is the setting described? Is it realistic? Imaginary? Oniric? Gothic? Etc. How detailed or
cursory does the description appear? Are we given a panoramic view or a close-up? How much local
color does the narrator use?

Checklist: What particular markers can you pay attention to in order to describe the setting?
→ lexical fields attached to places (metaphors, imagery), temporal markers, deixis, deictics (“now”,
“this”, “today”, “here”), sentences and paragraph structures

III. THE CHARACTERS : CHARACTERIZATION

• Who are the characters and what function/role do they play in the plot? Who are the main
protagonists? Antagonists?
• How are the characters described/portrayed/depicted? (a description/a portrayal/depiction)
• Are they mainly presented through showing (a direct staging of their actions and words) or telling
(an indirect narrative transcription of their actions and words)?
• What can you say about the following elements:
- name: does it have a specific meaning / connotation (onomastics)
- appearance: what details are given about their face? body? clothes? manners? overall
appearance…
- speech: do they have an accent? Do they speak a specific dialect? Sociolect? Idiolect (or is
their speech idiosyncratic?)
- relationships? family background?
- psychology: is it simple/static or complex/dynamic (remark: novel writer E.M Forster uses
the terms “flat” and “round”)? Is it consistent or inconsistent?

• Is the character realistic? True-to-life?

Caricatural? Stereotypical? Is it a stock
character? Does he correspond to a specific
type (villain, lover, clown…)? Or a particular
“humor”?

• What is the relationship between the

narrator and the character? Is the latter
described in pejorative / meliorative terms?
Etc.

IV. POINTS OF VIEW AND NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES.

1. Point of view / focalization = through whose eyes is the story perceived ? Who is the
focalizer / the viewer?

• first person point of view / internal focalization: we enter a character’s mind and see the events
through his eyes. Therefore, the knowledge of the story is often restricted to what the character sees or
knows.
remark: multiple focalization juxtaposes various internal points of view, we shift from one focalizer
to the next. (ex: As I Lay Dying)
• third person point of view / external focalization: the events are seen from a distance, through
someone who is exterior to the story.
remark: zero focalization: a type of external focalization in which the viewer has unrestricted
knowledge about the events and characters. Ex.:

2. Narration = whose voice is the one telling the story? Who is the narrator?

• As with the viewer/focalizer, the narration can be:

- subjective narration: the narrator is also a character
- external narration: the narrator is not involved in the story.
In the case of an external narrator who has unrestricted knowledge about the events, characters
thoughts, hidden actions …, you may talk about an omniscient narrator (= who knows everything)

• In addition, several levels of narration can be identified, when a story contains other stories.
- the main story needs to be differentiated from …
- … the embedded story/story
• When the embedded story reflects the main story, you can talk about a mise en abyme (ex: a writer
who writes the story of another writer).

• Critic Gérard Genette identifies several subtler categories to describe the narrator’s participation to
the narrative. His terminology revolves around the Greek term diegesis = the narrative (le récit), to
which he adds various prefixes. A narrator can therefore be :

homodiegetic: the narrator is a character in the story

Participation in the story autodiegetic: the narrator relates his own story.
[in all narratives]
heterodiegetic: the narrator is not a character in the story,
(often an
omniscient narrator)
Level of narration extradiegetic: the narrator stands above the story he tells,
[only in the case of which is the main story.
embedded stories] intradiegetic: the narrator of an embedded story, within the
main story.

• Depending on his participation in the story, his intentions, his strategies, etc., the narrator can be:
- intrusive / overt / self-effacing
- detached / involved
- subjective or impersonal
- reliable / unreliable

• If the story is explicitly told to someone, you can talk about a narratee (as opposed to the narrator)
or an addressee (as opposed to the addresser).

• In addition to these, other entities also exist around a narrative

- the author (to be absolutely distinguished from the narrator. The only case when the
author/narrator/character are the same person is the autobiography
- the reader
BEWARE !!!
- Note that the character / focalizer / narrator can be one and the same person OR they can all be
different.
- But the narrator should not be confused with the author, except when they are explicitly
designated as being the same person, especially in the case of autobiography where the
author = the narrator = the main character.
The same can be said for the reader who is not the same as the addressee/narratee.
3. One of the most useful tools to comment on characterization, point of view and narration
is the study of speech (= discours) and of the way it is presented.

Françoise Grellet draws a very useful line to understand the various possible manners of
introducing speech. She explains that the two extremes of speech presentation are telling (the
narrator reports the story, but does not present it to you directly) on the one hand and showing
(the narrator is effaced, you watch the scene, as if it were a theatrical play) on the other hand. In
between, you can have many nuances:

TELLING ← ________________________________________________ → SHOWING

Indirect/ Free
Narrative Semi-indirect Free indirect Direct
reported direct
summary speech speech speech
speech speech

• Narrative summary: only the narrator speaks. He describes the scene and might explain that the
characters speak, but he does not reproduce their words.
Ex: The teacher spoke to the students.

• Indirect or reported speech: only the narrator speaks, but in this case, he reports the character’s
words, indirectly, without quotation marks but with the necessary grammatical changes, especially if
the story is told in the past (tenses, pronouns, deictics, word order…)
Ex: The teacher said that she was very happy to be there.

• Semi-indirect speech: Almost the same as with indirect speech (introductory verbs, subordinate
clauses, tense changes), but with quotation marks.
Ex: The teacher said “she was very happy to be there.”

• Free indirect speech: it stands halfway between direct and indirect speech : It keeps the same
grammatical form as in indirect speech :
- tense changes
- pronoun changes
// But it also has many of the characteristics of direct speech :
- no introductory verb
- the subject/verb inversion is kept in questions
- deictics are often the same as with direct speech
→ This is often the technique employed to transcribe an interior monologue or a stream of
consciousness.
Ex: She was very happy to be here.
• Direct speech: The narrator still intervenes to describe the scene and specify who speaks, but the
characters words are kept as such, in quotation marks.
Ex: “I’m very happy to be here”

• Free direct speech: The characters words (with or without quotation marks are transcribed directly,
with no precision from the narrator as to who speaks.
Ex: I