Omniscient point of viewWhen a storyis told by someone outside the action, he is called a third-person narrator (because he refers to everybody in the story in the third person: “he”, “she”, “they”). In this form of narration the person who is telling the story is like an observer who has witnessed what has happened, but plays no part in the events. The omniscient third-person narrator is a kind of God; he is all-knowing. He knows everything about the fictional world he has created: he can read other characters’ innermost thoughts, he is able to be in several places at once, he knows exactly what is going to happen and how each character will behave. He is free to tell us as much or as little as he wishes. An omniscient third-person narrator who interrupts the narrative and speaks directly to the readers is called obtrusive. He may use these intrusions to summarise, philosophise, moralise or to guide the reader’s interpretation of events. This kind of narrator was particularly popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. If the narrator does not address the reader directly he is referred to as non-obtrusive. So, this type knows all, peeking into the lives of major and minor characters, reading everyone’s thoughts. This enables the writer to explore multiple facets of the story in depth. Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart trilogy, for example.
Third-person narrators:
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