This document discusses point of view and types of narrators in storytelling. It identifies different categories of narrators including real people narrators like first person major and minor, as well as omniscient narrators like third person and editorially omniscient. Examples are provided for each type of narrator to illustrate how the story would be told through different perspectives. The document concludes with an activity asking the reader to rewrite a short section of the three little pigs story using different narrator viewpoints.

1. Writing Prompt (15 min)
• Write a ghost story in which the narrator is a ghost.

2. Point of View

4. Henry James, “The House of Fiction”
Where you stand determines what you see.
Point of View

5. Whose eyes are we looking through?
Whose central nervous system?

10. Narrators
Real People “God-Like”
Star WarsStand By Me

11. Narrative Powers
Omniscient narrators can
• Be invisible
• Read characters’ minds
• Know what will happen
• Be trusted to tell the truth
Omniscient narrators don’t have
names or lives.
A “real” person has to
• Be there or be told
• Make inferences or guesses
• Only know after the fact
• Can’t always be trusted
Real people have names and lives

12. Kinds of Narrators
Real People Omniscient Narrators
First Person-Minor First Person-Major
Third Person Omniscient Editorially Omniscient

13. First Person-Major
“I could picture it. I have a habit of imagining the conversations
between my friends. We went out to the Cafe Napolitain to have an
aperitif and watch the evening crowd on the Boulevard.”

14. First Person-Minor
She missed the bus. She'd probably spent an hour arguing with herself
that she really should get up. I could picture her there, curled up in bed
with the cat next to her. Now she was going to have to walk to work.

15. Third Person Omniscient
“Margaret, the eldest of the four, was sixteen, and very pretty, being
plump and fair, with large eyes, plenty of soft brown hair, a sweet
mouth, and white hands, of which she was rather vain. Fifteen-year-old
Jo was very tall, thin, and brown, and reminded one of a
colt…Elizabeth, or Beth, as everyone called her, was a rosy, smooth-
haired, bright-eyed girl of thirteen, with a shy manner, a timid voice,
and a peaceful expression, which was seldom disturbed…”

16. Editorially Omniscient
If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better
off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy
ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the
middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the
lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny
Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming, and
resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely
unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with
misfortune, misery and despair. I’m sorry to tell you this, but that is
how the story goes.

17. Practice with narrators
• Rewrite any section of the story of the three little pigs with your
assigned narrator. The story should only be 50 words long.
First Person-Major as one of the pigs
First Person-Major as the wolf
First Person-Minor as someone who lived near the pigs
Third Person Omniscient in the head of one of the pigs
Editorially Omniscient — you love the wolf
Editorially Omniscient — you hate the wolf