Take your favourite book from its shelf. Sit down, make yourself comfortable. Turn off your phone. Now, before you go on to the rest of this article, open your book and read the first few pages.
There. Now think back to when you were reading. We always
‘hear’ a voice in our head when we read.
I want you to consider what that voice sounded like. Was it an all-knowing
voice, coldly observing and narrating what happened to the characters – much
like the authoritative voice overs for Discovery Channel documentaries? Or was
this voice involved, excited about what happened? Did the voice belong to one
of the characters in the story, or was it commenting from outside the fictional
world in which the characters lived? Could you guess anything about the voice’s
gender, its political preferences, its age? To whom did the voice address
itself?
This voice is called the narrative voice. This narrative
voice is of huge importance for storytelling,
especially verbal storytelling (i.e. oral or written). You need to
choose your narrative voice carefully, because it needs to fit the story you
tell in order for it to be successful. In this article I will discuss several
choices regarding the narrative voice you need to make when you begin your
storytelling.
Tone of voice
The first choice we need to make is our tone of voice. Is
the narrative voice very explicit,
commenting upon what’s going on in the story, giving his or her own opinion,
establishing a relationship with the reader? Or does your storytelling call for
a documentary style voice – a hidden
narrative voice, almost disappearing into the background while the characters
and their actions take centre-stage?
Narrator
And to whom does the narrative voice belong? We call this
the narrator, the one who tells the story. Now, it’s of course you, the
storyteller who tells the story, but that doesn’t always mean you’re the
narrator too. We have two types of narrators: narrators-inside-the-story and narrators-outside-the
story.
Narrators-outside-the-story
have not experienced what the story is about. Please note that this doesn’t
mean that the narrator cannot say “I” to refer to themselves. A narrator can
say something like “Now I shall tell the reader how it happened” or “I don’t
think she should have acted like this”, but if the story is something they
haven’t experienced, they’re still a narrator-outside-the-story
– just one with a very explicit narrative voice. This is the type of narrator you need if you want to represent the feelings and thoughts of your character: only an 'all knowing' narrator-outside-the-story can look 'inside the heads' of your characters.
Narrators-inside-the-story
come in two shapes: a narrator who is also the main character of the story; or a narrator who has witnessed the
deeds of the story’s main character. The first type can be found in a lot of
stories: it is basically somebody talking about something they’ve done. The
second type is less common, but can make for fantastic storytelling. The
Sherlock Holmes books by Arthur Conan Doyle are a good example: Sherlock Holmes
is the main character, but the narrator is dr Watson, his sidekick: it is
Watson who tells about Holmes’ heroic deeds. It’s a great trick, because Watson
can be surprised by Holmes’s ingenuity, his unorthodox methods, and his
cleverness; something that would never be possible if Holmes himself were the
narrator. The witness-narrator is one
of the great underused narrative tricks in storytelling.
If we combine the types of narrators with the types of
narrative voice, we end up with four types of possible narrators.
·
Narrator-outside-the-story with an explicit narrative voice: comments upon what’s going on in the story, expresses
opinions, etc.
·
Narrator-outside-the-story with a hidden
narrative voice: the documentary-style voice.
·
Narrator-inside-the-story who is the story’s
main character
·
Narrator-inside-the-story who is a witness to
the deeds of the story’s main character
(The narrators-inside-the-story
always have an eopenly present narrative voice, of course, because they are
characters. However, we can always foreground their tone of voice more or less,
especially with the witness narrator.)
A very good exercise is trying to tell (parts of) the story
you’re writing (or someone else’s text – what about that book you read at the
beginning of this article?) using each of these types of narrators. Don’t think
you can only have different types of narrator in fictional storytelling. Try doing
this with a newspaper article and you’ll see how exciting it can be to try
different types of narrators in non-fiction too! As you discover how your story
changes with each type of narrator, you will also get a feel for when to use which
narrator. In the end, this will make you a more effective storyteller.
And by the way: Don’t forget to put your phone back on!
This is the third post in a series of seven articles about storytelling.
Read the other articles here:
1. The Four Elements of Storytelling
2. Ten Esential Building Stones for a Good Story
3. Telling Your Story With the Right Voice
4. Guide Your Audience!
5. Telling Your Story With the Right Point of View
6. Why Your Story Needs a Moral Dilemma
7. The Fifth Element of Storytelling
