Three types of narrative point of view

The three types of narrative point of view are third person point of view, first person point of view, and second person point of view.

1. Third person point of view.

Third-person narration is narration from the position of a bystander who has nothing to do with the story. Since the narrator is usually an unidentified bystander, the result is that this type of narration is traditionally characterized by a lack of perspective. The narrator is like an omniscient God, who can be in different places at the same time, can know the past and foretell the future, and can enter any character's mind at will to dig for privacy. Because the point of view of the narration can wander, this kind of narration can also be called unfocused narration.

In short, this kind of narration gives the author full freedom because there is no restriction on the point of view. It is common for traditional narrative works to use this type of narration. This deprived the receiver of much of the right to explore and interpret the work. As a result, in modern times, this omniscient style of narration has been criticized by many critics of fiction.

But because the author has been given full freedom of narration, this kind of narration tends to produce a tendency that the narrator can completely predict and manipulate the characters and their fates, and all the events in the work, and the readers will consciously or unconsciously realize in the process of reading that the narrator has already known all the things that haven't yet happened in the story, and will eventually tell the readers what they need to know, so that the readers can only passively wait in the reading process. Therefore, the reader can only passively wait for the narrator to tell everything that he or she has not yet known.

2, first person point of view.

First-person point of view, also known as the "inner focus of narration". It is characterized by one is the text of the 'I' is both the narrator, but also a role in the story, with a dual identity, the narrative seems more real; Second, the narrator's perspective is limited, can not narrate the character does not know the content. However, this limitation creates a subjective nature of the narration, which can produce a sense of immersive realism.

This dual identity makes the character different from other characters in the work, more "transparent" and easier to understand than other characters in the story. Secondly, his perspective as a narrator is limited by his identity as a character, and he cannot narrate what the character does not know.

This limitation causes the subjectivity of the narration, just like the focal point perspective in painting, because of the limitation of the projection relationship, there is a difference between the size of the distance and the front and back of the occlusion, but also because of this will produce a sense of immersive realism. Modern narrative works focusing on subjective psychological depiction often use this method.

3, the second person point of view.

The second-person point of view is essentially a variation of third-person narration, which is rare.

But some studies have argued that dramatic narrative is also in a sense a second-person narrative, because the theater performance of the audience as the "fourth wall" of the consciousness of the playwright's narration often has a tendency to face the audience, monologue or narration of a narrative in this tendency is especially obvious, invisible This tendency is especially obvious in monologue or voice-over narratives, which are invariably a kind of narration with "you" as the object, which means that the audience becomes a participant in the narrative of the play.

Second-person narration is characterized by a clear involvement of the receiver in the act of narration, which is exactly what dramatic narratives need.