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A narrative technique (also, in fiction, a fictional device) is any of several storytelling methods the creator of a narrative uses,
(2025). 9780439444040, Scholastic Inc.. ISBN 9780439444040
thus effectively relaying information to the audience or making the story more complete, complex, or engaging. Some scholars also call such a technique a narrative mode, though this term can also more narrowly refer to the particular technique of narration to deliver a story. Other possible synonyms within written narratives are literary technique or literary device, though these can also broadly refer to non-narrative writing strategies, as might be used in academic or essay writing, as well as poetic devices such as assonance, metre, or rhyme scheme. Furthermore, narrative techniques are distinguished from narrative elements, which exist inherently in all works of narrative, rather than being merely optional strategies.
| The novel Ulysses by James Joyce is set in Dublin, Ireland, over the course of a single day, 16 June 1904. The novel spans from Sandycove in the South to Howth Head in the North, with detailed descriptions of Dublin locations that parallel those in Homer Odyssey. Leopold Bloom's home at 7 Eccles Street serves as a modern-day Ithaca, while other landmarks represent various episodes of the Odyssey. In Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North (1966), the narrative alternates between an unnamed village on the Nile and London. This dual setting frames Mustafa Sa'eed's movement between home and the former imperial center. It shows how place shapes his relationships and sense of self while the novel examines the continuing effects of colonialism. |
| Though The Lord of the Rings trilogy takes place in a relatively short period towards the end of the 3021-year Third Age, the narration gives glimpses of the mythological and historical events which took place earlier in the Third Age leading up to the action in the novel, and in the First and Second Age. | |
| "Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there." — Anton Chekhov | |
| Almost every episode of TV shows like Dexter and Breaking Bad ends with one of the characters in a predicament (about to be caught by thugs, about to be exposed by the authorities, or a family member or a friend finds out the main character's dirty secret). | |
| At the end of The Lord of the Rings, Gollum forcibly takes away the Ring from Frodo, suggesting that Sauron would eventually take over Middle Earth. However, Gollum celebrates too eagerly and clumsily falls into the lava, whereby the ring is destroyed and with it Sauron's power. In a way, Gollum does what Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring intended to do through the whole plot of the trilogy, which was to throw the ring into the lake of fire in the heart of Mount Doom. | |
| The story of "The Three Apples" in the Arabian Nights tales begins with the discovery of a young woman's dead body. After the murderer later reveals himself, he narrates his reasons for the murder as a flashback of events leading up to the discovery of her dead body at the beginning of the story. | |
| Occurs in A Christmas Carol when Mr. Scrooge visits the ghost of the future. It is also frequent in the later seasons of the television series Lost. | |
| A narration might begin with a male character who has to break up a schoolyard fight among some boys who are vying for the attention of a girl, which was introduced to foreshadow the events leading to a dinner time squabble between the character and his twin brother over a woman, whom both are courting at the same time. | |
| A story which occupies a small part of the total narrative, such that one or more other stories are recounted within the frame story. Contrast story within a story. | With multiple internal stories: early examples include Panchatantra, Kalila and Dimna, Arabian Nights, and The Decameron. More modern examples are Brian Jacques's 1999 The Legend of Luke, Ramsay Wood's 2011 Kalila and Dimna update, subtitled Fables of Conflict and Intrigue and Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen's 1964 The Knight of Denmark (O cavaleiro da Dinamarca).
With a single internal story: in Frankenstein, the frame story is narrated by an Arctic explorer, who is told the main story by Victor Frankenstein. In Wuthering Heights, the frame story is told by a visitor; the main story begins 30 years earlier and comprises transcripts of letters and journal entries he reads and accounts he hears from the protagonists. |
| This is used in epic poems, for example, where it is a mandatory form to be adopted. Luís de Camões' The Lusiads or the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer are prime examples. The latter work begins with the return of Odysseus to his home of Ithaca and then in flashbacks tells of his ten years of wandering following the Trojan War. The Lusiads starts in the middle of the sea voyage to India and contextualizes the beginning of said journey as well as Portugal's history when the master of the ship tells an African king about it. | |
| Any non-fiction book is often introduced with an interesting factoid. | |
| "Heart of the Ocean" necklace in James Cameron's 1997 Titanic, which essentially serves as an object to cause Rose to tell her story. | |
| A Rakugo is a Japanese verbal entertainment usually lasting 30 minutes which ends with a surprise punch line, a narrative stunt known as ochi (fall) or sage (lowering). Twelve kinds of ochi are codified and recognized. The earlier kobanashi was a short comical vignette ending with an ochi. | |
| An early example is the Arabian Nights tale "The Three Apples". A locked chest found by a fisherman contains a dead body, and two different men claim to be the murderer, which turns out to be the investigator's own slave. | |
| Wile E. Coyote coming up with a contraption to catch the Road Runner, only to be foiled and caught by his own devices. Each sin's punishment in Dante's Inferno is a symbolic instance of poetic justice. | |
| In Doctor Who, the main character repeatedly finds himself under the obligation of having to travel back in time because of something his future character has done. | |
| For example, in mystery fiction, an innocent party may be purposefully cast as highly suspicious through emphasis or descriptive techniques to divert attention from the true guilty party. | |
| Early examples include the legend of Oedipus, and the story of Krishna in the Mahabharata. There is also an example of this in Harry Potter when Lord Voldemort heard a prophecy (made by Sybill Trelawney to Dumbledore) that a boy born at the end of July, whose parents had defied Voldemort thrice and survived, would be made marked as his equal. Because of this prophecy, Lord Voldemort sought out Harry Potter (believing him to be the boy spoken of) and tried to kill him. His parents died protecting him, and when Voldemort tried to cast a killing curse on Harry, it rebounded and took away most of his strength, and gave Harry Potter a unique ability and connection with the Dark Lord thus marking him as his equal. | |
| In Stephen King's The Wind Through the Keyhole, of the Dark Tower series, the protagonist tells a story from his past to his companions, and in this story he tells another relatively unrelated story. | |
| In the post-apocalyptic novel On the Beach, the main characters face increasing Nuclear fallout drifting across the equator toward Australia. Learning that the worst is predicted to come sooner rather than later heightens the urgency and sense of immediacy felt by the characters and by the reader. | |
| An example is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The novel includes an unexpected plot twist at the end of the novel. In the last chapter, Sheppard describes how he was an unreliable narrator. |
| Dr. Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Scott Evil, played by Seth Green, son of Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers films. The companion role in Doctor Who, usually a contemporary human, giving the alien Doctor someone to explain situations to, for the benefit of the audience. Dr. Jennifer Melfi in The Sopranos. |
| Socrates in the writings of Plato. Plato never speaks in his own voice in his dialogues. In the Second Letter, it says, "no writing of Plato exists or ever will exist, but those now said to be his are those of a Socrates become beautiful and new". |
| The characters in Sesame Street often break the fourth wall when they address their viewers as part of the ongoing storyline, which is possible because of the high level of suspension of disbelief afforded by its audience—children. The English political drama show House of Cards and its later American version, also use this technique frequently to let the viewers know what the main character Frank Underwood is thinking and planning. Ferris Bueller in Ferris Bueller's Day Off frequently addresses the audience. Mr. Wolf in The Bad Guys and its sequel occasionally talks to the audience. |
| In Swift's Gulliver's Travels, when Gulliver visits the land of the giants and sees a giant woman's skin, he sees it as anything but smooth and beautiful when viewed up close. Another common method of defamiliarization is to "make strange" a story (fabula) by creating a deformed plot (syuzhet). Tristram Shandy is defamiliarized by Laurence Sterne's unfamiliar plotting,Victor Shklovsky, "Sterne's Tristram Shandy: Stylistic Commentary" in Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, 2nd ed., trans. Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2012, 25–57. which causes the reader to pay attention to the story and see it in an unjaded way. |
| Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn uses the title character as the narrator, while Sherlock Holmes is primarily told from Watson's perspective. The film The Wolf of Wall Street uses this technique where the protagonist narrates the film's events throughout, providing clarity that could not be gained from the picture and dialogue alone. |
| Particularly popular with authors like Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges. Elsewhere, Salman Rushdie's work provides good examples. |
| The films of Robert Altman. 2666 by Roberto Bolano features European literary critics, a Chilean philosophy professor, an African-American journalist, detectives investigating Santa Teresa murders and an obscure German writer named Benno Von Archimboldi. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov features literature professor John Shade, Charles Kinbote, a neighbor and colleague of Shade's and Charles the Beloved, king of Zembla. Kinbote is the ultimate unreliable commentator. |
| Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney. |
| An example is Ulysses. At one point Leopold Bloom saunters through Dublin musing on "Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugar-sticky girl shovelling scoopful of creams for a Christian brother. Some school treat. Bad for their tummies." |
| A Song of Ice and Fire is written in multiple limited third-person narrators that change with each chapter. The Master and Margarita uses an omniscient narrator. |
| C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a religious allegory with Aslan as Christ and Edmund as Judas. | ||
| In the film V for Vendetta the main character performs a couple of soliloquies with a heavy use of alliteration, e.g., "Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished, as the once vital voice of the verisimilitude now venerates what they once vilified. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose vis-à-vis an introduction, and so it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V." | ||
| E.g., Original sentence: The thesis paper was difficult. After amplification: The thesis paper was difficult: it required extensive research, data collection, sample surveys, interviews and a lot of fieldwork. | ||
| E.g., An anagram for "debit card" is "bad credit". As you can see, both phrases use the same letters. By mixing the letters a bit of humor is created. | ||
| An example is when John F. Kennedy said on January 20, 1961 "...that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." | ||
| The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant. | ||
| E.g., in "Know then thyself. ‖ Presume not God to scan" (from An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope) | ||
| Popularized by 20th century playwright Bertolt Brecht. | ||
| This technique appears at least as far back as the Arabian Nights. | ||
| "Is it not far better to abhor sins by the remembrance of others' faults, than by repentance of thine own follies?" (from Euphues, 1, lecture by the wise Neapolitan) | ||
| Sally could no longer hide her secret. Her pregnant belly was bigger than the planet on which she stood. | ||
| When the boots came off his feet with a leathery squeak, a smell of ferment and fish market immediately filled the small tent. The skin of his toes were red and raw and sensitive. The malodorous air was so toxic he thought he could almost taste his toes. | ||
| This dates back at least to the Arabian Nights.Heath (1994) p. 360 | ||
| Metonymy: The boxer threw in the towel. Synecdoche: She gave her hand in marriage. | ||
| Sally's pregnant belly most likely weighed as much as the scooter she used to ride before she got pregnant. | ||
| Words that imitate/spell a sound or noise. Word that sounds the same as, or similar to what the word means. | "Boom goes the dynamite." "Bang!" "Bark." (comic books) | |
| "terrible beauty" | ||
| "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." ( A Tale of Two Cities) | ||
| MAD Magazine | ||
| Such as the many stories featuring Sherlock Holmes not written by Arthur Conan Doyle, or much of the Cthulhu Mythos. | ||
| In Romeo and Juliet, the two main characters each commit suicide at the sight of the supposedly dead lover, however the audience knows these actions to be rash and unnecessary. Therefore, Shakespeare makes for the emotional appeal for the unnecessary tragedy behind the young characters' rash interpretations about love and life. | ||
| Taken from Act I, Scene II of Romeo and Juliet: "When well-appareled April on the heel / Of limping winter treads." | ||
| "Not as a call to battle, though embattled we are." John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961. | ||
| An example of this is in the first chapter of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens: "A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin." | ||
| An example is Network. One of the earliest examples is Gulliver's Travels, written by Jonathan Swift. The television program South Park is another. | ||
| The boot was tough and sinewy between his hard-biting teeth. There was no flavor to speak of except for the blandness of all the dirt that the boot had soaked up over the years. The only thing the boot reminded him of was the smell of a wet dog. | ||
| The broken ends of the long bone were sticking through the bleeding skin, but it wasn't something that always killed a man. | ||
| Title drop | Line of dialogue used to announce the name of the piece. | In The Breakfast Club, the final line is "Sincerely yours, The Breakfast Club". |
| A person hears a prophecy about himself. His endeavor to stop the prophecy from coming true makes it come true. |
| Her tears were a river flowing down her cheeks. |
| Each of the chapters of Ulysses by James Joyce. |
| The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi or the Cheshire Cat of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll |
| Oedipus kills his own father because he does not understand his true parentage. |
| For example, the storm in William Shakespeare's King Lear, which mirrors Lear's mental deterioration. |
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