Mariusz Leś's List: Narratologia

How to write fiction: Geoff Dyer on freedom
Writing is a natural process – we're all geared up to do it, says Geoff Dyer
Open thread: how to write fiction

Don't miss your 40-page guide to writing fiction, free with the Guardian this Saturday


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Geoff Dyer
guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 October 2011 16.37 BST
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Illustration: Jirayu Koo
The great thing about this cat – the writing one – is that there are a thousand different ways to skin it. In fact, you don't have to skin it at all – and it doesn't even need to be a cat! What I mean, in the first instance, is feel free to dispute or ignore everything in this introduction or in the articles that follow. As Tobias Wolff puts it in his masterly novel Old School: "For a writer there is no such thing as an exemplary life … Certain writers do good work at the bottom of a bottle. The outlaws generally write as well as the bankers, though more briefly. Some writers flourish like opportunistic weeds by hiding among the citizens, others by toughing it out in one sort of desert or another."

This freedom is the challenging perk of the non-job. If you are a tennis player any weakness – an inability, say, to deal with high-bouncing balls to your backhand – will be just that. And so you must devote long hours of practice to making the vulnerable parts of your game less vulnerable. If you are a writer the equivalent weakness can rarely be made good so you are probably better off letting it atrophy and enhancing some other aspect of your performance.

Writers are defined, in large measure, by what they can't do. The mass of things that lie beyond their abilities force them to concentrate on the things they can. "I can't do this," exclaims the distraught Mother-Writer in People Like That Are the Only People Here, Lorrie Moore's famous story about a young child dying of cancer. "I can do quasi-amusing phone dialogue. I do the careful ironies of daydreams. I do the marshy ideas upon which intimate life is built …" From the sum total of these apparent trivialities emerges a fiction which succeeds in doing precisely what it claims it can't.

Or take a more extreme example: Franz Kafka. Was ever a writer so consumed by the things he couldn't do? Stitch together all the things Kafka couldn't do and you have a draft of War and Peace. The corollary of this is that what he was left with was stuff no one else could do – or had ever done. Stepping over into music, wasn't it partly Beethoven's inability to conjure melodies as effortlessly as Mozart that encouraged the development of his transcendent rhythmic power? How reassuring to know that the same problems that afflict journeymen artists also operate at the level of genius.

A spokesman for the former, I have written novels even though I have absolutely no ability to think of – and no interest in – stories and plots. The best I can come up with are situations which tend, with some slight variation of locale, to be just one situation: boy meets girl. Other things – structure and tone – must, in these severely compromised circumstances, take over some of the load-bearing work normally assumed by plot. The same holds true for certain kinds of non-fiction, those animated by – and reliant on more than – the appeal of their ostensible subject matter.

This is another lesson: you don't have to know what kind of book you are writing until you have written a good deal of it, maybe not until you've finished it – maybe not even then. That's the second sense in which the cat doesn't have to be a cat. All that matters is that at some point the book generates a form and style uniquely appropriate to its own needs. Why bother offering readers an experience that they can get from someone else? The playwright David Hare once claimed that: "The two most depressing words in the English language are 'literary fiction'." Remember this: literary fiction does not set a standard that is to be aspired to; it describes a habit of convention that people – writers and readers alike – collapse into, like a comfy old sofa.

Which, surely, is not such a bad place to be. Except, for writers, the sofa should always be an extension of the desk. Reading is not just part of your apprenticeship; it continues to inform, stimulate and invigorate your writing life – and it is never passive. In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion recalls her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, rereading Sophie's Choice by William Styron, "trying to see how it worked". To see how Styron got away with it is the more interesting question in my and Martin Amis's view. (Styron's novel was, for Amis, "a flapping, gobbling, squawking turkey".)

There's a lesson here. One's reading does not have to be confined to the commanding – and thereby discouraging – heights of the truly great. Take a look also at what's happening on the lower slopes, even in the crowded troughs. We tend to think of ambition operating in terms of some ultimate destination – the Nobel Prize or bust! – but it also manifests itself incrementally, at the level of pettiness. To read a well-regarded writer and to find the conviction growing in yourself that he or she is second- or third-rate, that, in Bob Dylan's words, "you can say it just as good", is both encouraging and, if acted upon, a niggling form of ambition. (If it is not acted upon it becomes simply corrosive.)

As with ambition so with practicalities. It's a daunting prospect to sit down with the intention of writing a masterpiece. If it has any chance of being realised that ambition is best broken down into achievable increments, such as I will sit here for two hours, or 500 words or whatever. Keep these targets manageable and you will feel good about your progress, even if that progress is, inevitably, measured negatively.

The satisfactions of writing are indistinguishable from its challenges and difficulties. It is constantly testing all your faculties and skills (of expression, concentration, memory, imagination and empathy) on the smallest scale (sentences, words, commas) and the largest (the overall design, structure and purpose of the book) simultaneously. It brings you absolutely and always up against your limitations. That's why people keep at it – and why it's far easier to give advice about writing than it is to do it.

• Geoff Dyer is the author of four novels – including Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi – and many non-fiction books, among them The Ongoing Moment, But Beautiful and Out of Sheer Rage. His latest book, Zona, a meditation on cinema, will be published in February by Canongate. To pre-order Zona for £15 (RRP £20) visit guardian.co.uk/bookshop

To buy the ebook of How to Write Fiction: a Guardian Masterclass, visit http://amzn.to/nV7b5W

• This article was amended on 14 October 2011. Owing to editing changes, a sentence in the original appeared as follows: In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion recalls her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, rereading Sophie's Choice by William Styron, "trying to see how it worked" (Styron's novel was, for him, "a flapping, gobbling, squawking turkey".) This has been corrected.

Jack Hart on “Storycraft” and narrative nonfiction as an American literary form

A soup-to-nuts look at narrative nonfiction, Jack Hart’s “Storycraft” breaks down different approaches to telling true stories and the components that make or break them. In writing the book, Hart brought to bear a doctorate, years of teaching in college classrooms, and a quarter-century of experience at The Oregonian, where he edited several stories selected as Pulitzer finalists and winners. We caught up with Hart by phone last month to talk about the book. In these excerpts from our conversation, he discusses different kinds of narrative, the importance of selecting the right structure, and the writer’s responsibility to master basic story forms – “the ones that we know work.”

(This conversation has been lightly edited for length.)

I’m going to ask you about some of the things you cover in the book, seeing as most of our readers won’t have read it yet. So even —

But they will read it soon.

Of course they will – this will be such a compelling conversation. But I was interested in how you tie together a lot of different approaches to narrative, offering a kind of umbrella approach to what story is and how it works in nonfiction. Coming at it from a different angle: Do you find yourself finding one or two main ways that stories tend not to work?

Well, I think that you hit on it when you talked about the umbrella. I think that a lot of folks who work in various forms of narrative don’t realize all the structures available to them, and they often try to force square pegs into round holes. So a writer and an editor may have material that would be great for an explanatory narrative, and they try to turn it into a full-blown story narrative, with a narrative arc and a climax and a denouement, and all the elements that go into that. They turn a potential silk purse into a sow’s ear – they have great material but the wrong structure. So I think an awareness of all the different forms in which you can tell true stories using narrative techniques is important to succeeding with a broad variety of materials.

Not everyone will have thought about the differences in some of these categories. Could you talk about, say, story narrative versus explanatory narrative?

Explanatory narrative is the classic New Yorker form – the McPhee, Susan Orlean, David Grann story – where you have a narrative line, a sequence of actions with frequent digressions, where you talk in more abstract terms, more report-like terms, about the context. So McPhee writes about a trucker crossing the country, let’s say. Sometimes you’re in the cab with the trucker, driving, and often you are off exploring various dimensions of trucking and hazmat materials or fuel consumption or the country’s freight system or whatever.

So that’s an explanatory narrative. It’s the form that Rich Read used when I worked with him on “The French Fry Connection” that won the Pulitzer in ’91, I think it was.

A classic story narrative has the narrative arc that you find in a novel. An initial section is devoted to exposition, in which you introduce a protagonist. The protagonist engages a complication. You move through a section called rising action, in which the protagonist grapples with the complication. Eventually you reach a point of insight, in which the protagonist sees the world in the new way that finally allows resolution of the complication that sets up the climax, and then leads to a final wrapping-up-of-loose-ends section called falling action or denouement.

You don’t always have all those elements in a nonfiction narrative, but sometimes you hit a home run, as Tom Hallman did with his 2001 Pulitzer, the one I worked with him on, called “The Boy behind the Mask,” which had every single one of those elements in it, as complete as any novel could be.

There are very short narratives that just take the form of a single scene; we call those vignettes or tone poems. There are profiles that contain both narrative and report elements. There are personal essays that usually start with a first-person narrative, a sequence of actions that describe a personal experience, then go through a turn and reach some kind of conclusion.

There are long-form issue essays – Atlantic magazine-style pieces in which there’s a first-person exploration of some large theme. And then there are all kinds of bastard forms that include elements of one or more of these various structures.

But finding the right structure is key, I think. If a good writer finds the structure that works with his or her material, then right out of the gate, you can write an awfully compelling narrative.

I mentioned Rich Read. “The French Fry Connection” was his very first narrative ever, and he won a Pulitzer for it. And David Stabler made the finals for his very first narrative. … That was a piece I didn’t deal with in the book, which was called “Lost in the Music,” about a cello prodigy who kind of imploded during his senior year of high school, as a lot of prodigies do. A really fascinating story.

It seems like there are challenges to balancing when to go scenic and when to do summary, and kind of ending up in a mushy middle ground.

Let’s step back a minute. I like to distinguish between reports and stories. Reports tend to be abstract, and their principal purpose is to convey information. Stories tend to be very specific, and their purpose is to convey experience. So you have informational writing and experiential writing.

Most journalists most of the time write reports, and that’s a perfectly valid function of journalism – probably its most important function in the long run. When they attempt to tell a story, sometimes those old habits die hard, and they have a difficult time getting down the ladder of abstraction and entering the world of scenic narrative, where you’re describing specific events and specific scenic elements that unfold in, at least to the reader, what appears to be real time.

And most standard journalistic dailies are written at sort of the middle rungs of the ladder of abstraction. Writers who’ve been doing that all of their adults lives have a difficult time breaking loose sometimes and starting to move down to the highly specific scenic narrative, and then in the case of explanatory narrative, occasionally digressing and moving way up the ladder of abstraction to talk about the larger context and the meaning of what’s happening.

Do you have suggestions for any of our readers who are trying to make that leap?

Yes. Just step out the door and stand on a street corner, and take some very specific notes about the actual things that are happening before your eyes, and write up a very specific scene, the kind of thing that never appears in the standard journalistic report. Because that’s a basic skill that you need to tell great, true stories.

Are there things that shouldn’t be done as a narrative? You talk at some length about that in the book.

Oh, yes. Lots of things. (Laughs.)

But are there groups of things you see regularly tried as narratives that just don’t work?

One of my reviewers, as we went through the review process at University of Chicago press, was Cynthia Gorney, a great narrative writer. She teaches at Cal Berkeley now. Folks who deal with students always tell me this, but Cynthia made a very solid point that students want to run off and do narratives on things that are inappropriate for the narrative approach. For journalists, most of the topics they tackle are inappropriate for a narrative approach. It’s the information that’s important, not the story itself.

If people are hanging on the edge of their seats to hear the latest development in a running story, you don’t want to start with a long expository narrative arc windup. You’ll drive them to some other information source. Most of what you see in the daily paper should be written as a report.

Then what do you think are the parameters around news narratives?

On news narratives that are dailies, you don’t want something that’s a huge breaking story. We had our best success with interesting rescue stories, police enforcement stories, things like that – where the story is of greater interest than the actual news content. So we often had things that might have run as fairly minor news briefs or zoners that turned into great stories that made Page One. But the audience wasn’t out there aware that news was coming and hanging on the edge of their seats to hear what the latest-breaking developments were in those cases.

You don’t want your election results as a narrative.

Exactly.

There’s a lot to cover. One of the things you talk about is character development and the necessity of a sympathetic protagonist. A lot of the best narratives have sympathetic but often deeply flawed protagonists. Do you have suggestions on how to keep it real while maintaining the reader’s sympathy for the protagonist?

Well, just because the protagonist is flawed doesn’t have to mean he’s unsympathetic. I heard a really interesting segment on the “News Hour” last night with Russell Banks, the novelist, who’s just written a book …  This is a book about, apparently, sex criminals who can’t find a place to live, based on true life, who have holed up under an expressway in Miami.

The protagonist is a young man who is a convicted sex criminal, although the circumstances of the crime were something along the lines of sex with an underage girl who wasn’t that much different in age than he was. Obviously, he’s deeply flawed, and he’s in this terrible situation, but Banks made the point that he has to be a sympathetic character in order for the narrative to carry the reader through the story. That’s something we tend to forget. Journalists tend to focus on victims and perpetrators, neither one of which make terribly good protagonists in a true story.

Following on that, the concept of round and flat characters is something else you address. I’m sure we’ve all read stories with too many flat characters, where nobody emerges in the round. Have you seen many stories that suffered from too many round characters?

I just read one. It was written by an acquaintance, and I’m not going to mention the name, but there were probably six or seven very fully developed characters, and the narrative flipped back and forth from one to the other, and it was just impossible for me to keep them straight and to follow the story.

Do you think at that point it becomes an issue of point of view or stance, or is it just an over-proliferation of developed characters?

Both point of view and stance are shifting so rapidly and into so many different positions that the reader gets lost. At best you can have maybe three or four fully-developed characters. And if there’s a single protagonist, or maybe a couple of protagonists who can be developed even further, so much the better.

For those who have started to develop their voices and their ability to turn a nice phrase, you argue the importance of structure. What are the structural mistakes you see most often?

Well, that gets back to just choosing the wrong structure. A lot of would-be narrative nonfiction writers come into this with their focus on the story narrative with the complete narrative arc and try to force material into that form that just doesn’t work. I know that Tom Hallman had that experience early in his career. I’ve seen it with lots of other writers. It’s just a question of being aware of all the structures that are available to you and choosing the right one, or choosing none if it turns out that the material is best handled in some form other than narrative.

Not to upset the applecart, but in fiction, some of the most important strides have been made by people who pushed back against the conventions of story in their time. Obviously a lack of understanding of story mechanics is probably a more pressing problem, but do you think there’s room for mavericks to push the envelope on narrative journalism?

Oh, absolutely. I hope they do, and I’m looking forward to seeing some great new forms emerge. That said, you learn the established mechanisms – the ones that we know work – first. Picasso was an accomplished landscape and portrait artist before he branched off into cubism.

So often, young writers bridle at the notion that there are established forms that work, and that they have an obligation to learn those first. But a blues musician has to learn 12-bar blues before attempting something else.

That’s most of what I wanted to ask you about today. Is there anything else about the art of storytelling that you’d like to say?

One point to make is that there is a theory of story, and there are certain basic structures of story that apply in so many different fields and contexts that it just behooves all kinds of folks to apply themselves a little bit and to learn some of these forms. We’ve had an explosion of nonfiction storytelling over the past 20, 30 years. And now you see creative artists of all kinds doing terrific narrative in film and broadcast, as well as traditional locations like magazines and newspapers.

And certainly in the book world, this has become one of the dominant forms. I think it’s a major, major development in world literature. In a way, because this is a largely American development in literature, it’s analogous to the development of jazz. So what jazz was to world music, I think nonfiction narrative is to world literature, at least in English.

this entry was written by Andrea Pitzer, posted on October 20, 2011 at 4:41 pm, filed under words and tagged David Stabler, Jack Hart, Pulitzer Prize, Rich Read, The Oregonian, Tom Hallman. bookmark the permalink. follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. post a comment or leave a trackback: trackback URL.

Product Description
Since its inception, narratology has developed primarily as an investigation of literary narrative fiction. Linguists, folklorists, psychologists, and sociologists have expanded the inquiry toward oral storytelling, but narratology remains primarily concerned with language-supported stories. In Avatars of Story, Marie-Laure Ryan moves beyond literary works to examine other media, especially electronic narrative forms.  By grappling with semiotic media other than language and technology other than print, she reveals how story, a form of meaning that transcends cultures and media,  achieves  diversity by presenting itself under multiple avatars.
 
Ryan begins by considering, among other texts, a 1989 Cubs-Giants baseball broadcast, the reality television show Survivor, and the film The Truman Show. In all these texts, she sees a narrative that organizes meaning without benefit of hindsight, anticipating the real-time dimension of computer games. She then expands her inquiry to new media. In a discussion covering text-based interactive fiction such as Spider and Web and Galatea, hypertexts such as Califia and Patchwork Girl, multimedia works such as Juvenate, Web-based short narratives, and Façade, a multimedia, AI-supported project in interactive drama, she focuses on how narrative meaning is affected by the authoring software, such as the Infocom parser, the Storyspace hypertext-producing system, and the programs Flash and Director. She also examines arguments that have been brought up against considering computer games such as The Sims and EverQuest as a form of narrative, and responds by outlining an approach to computer games that reconciles their imaginative  and strategic dimension. In doing so, Ryan distinguishes a wide spectrum of narrative modes, such as utilitarian, illustrative, indeterminate, metaphorical, participatory, emergent, and simulative.
 
Ultimately, Ryan stresses the difficulty of reconciling narrativity with interactivity and anticipates the time when media will provide new ways to experience stories. 
 
Marie-Laure Ryan is an independent scholar and the author of, most recently, Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media.

Review
'Meticulously researched and cogently argued, this landmark work in narratology is perhaps the most distinguished recent contribution to the study of narrative....This highly recommendable book will be essential reading not only for all graduate students of English literature, literary theory, and narrative texts, but for the growing number of people concerned with building bridges between the traditionally separate disciplines of literary studies, linguistics, and cognitive theory' - European Journal of English Studies
Product Description
Towards a "Natural" Narratology makes an intervention into ongoing debates in literary theory and criticism. Monika Fludernik argues for a new narrative theory which builds on insights from conversational narrative while touching on key issues for poststructuralists. Drawing on insights from cognitive linguistics, discourse analysis and structuralist narratology, the author examines narrative structures as they have developed from oral storytelling to the realist novel and beyond. This is a ground-breaking work of synthesis which makes a significant contribution to fundamental issues in literary theory. Fludernik's new model entails a radical reconceptualization of current narratological thinking, integrating narrative theory within a wide range of topical debates in literary studies.

Product Description
Why We Read Fiction offers a lucid overview of the most exciting area of research in contemporary cognitive psychology known as "Theory of Mind" and discusses its implications for literary studies. It covers a broad range of fictional narratives, from Richardson’s Clarissa, Dostoyevski’s Crime and Punishment, and Austen’s Pride and Prejudice to Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Nabokov’s Lolita, and Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. Zunshine’s surprising new interpretations of well-known literary texts and popular cultural representations constantly prod her readers to rethink their own interest in fictional narrative. Written for a general audience, this study provides a jargon-free introduction to the rapidly growing interdisciplinary field known as cognitive approaches to literature and culture.
About the Author
Lisa Zunshine teaches English literature at the University of Kentucky, Lexington.

October 23, 2011
Overconfident Narratives Skew Decision Making
By Amy Zalman. Filed Under: Crisis Management, Decision making, Narrative and Cognition, Narrative Research, Strategic Leadership, Uncategorized.
In his new book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Princeton professor and Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman describes how, as a psychologist serving in the Israeli army, he selected candidates for officer training based on their success in a series of leadership tests.  Despite his own and his colleagues confidence in their choices, “the evidence was overwhelming”: they were no good at predicting success at all.  Kahneman explains:

You may be surprised by our failure: it is natural to expect the same leadership ability to manifest itself in various situations. But the exaggerated expectation of consistency is a common error. We are prone to think that the world is more regular and predictable than it really is, because our memory automatically and continuously maintains a story about what is going on, and because the rules of memory tend to make that story as coherent as possible and to suppress alternatives. Fast thinking is not prone to doubt.

The confidence we experience as we make a judgment is not a reasoned evaluation of the probability that it is right. Confidence is a feeling, one determined mostly by the coherence of the story and by the ease with which it comes to mind, even when the evidence for the story is sparse and unreliable. The bias toward coherence favors overconfidence. An individual who expresses high confidence probably has a good story, which may or may not be true.

I coined the term “illusion of validity” because the confidence we had in judgments about individual soldiers was not affected by a statistical fact we knew to be true — that our predictions were unrelated to the truth. This is not an isolated observation. When a compelling impression of a particular event clashes with general knowledge, the impression commonly prevails. And this goes for you, too. The confidence you will experience in your future judgments will not be diminished by what you just read, even if you believe every word.

The degree to which our narratives overwhelms the evidence in front of us is a strong argument in favor of a close focus on narrative-making itself in efforts to improve decision making.  One source of cognitive coherence surely lies in our mainstream meta-narrative about the process of decision making itself . As psychologist Lee Roy Beach has pointed out, “decision makers … frame [decisions] as choices of courses of action to which they expect to devote time, energy, and good judgment in an effort to make sure they turn out the way they want them to. In short, they view decisions as tools for actively managing the future so it conforms to their values and preference.”


Overconfident Decision Makers Dive in ... Even when There's No Evidence of a Pool
In narrative terms, decision makers see themselves as omniscient authors able to hover over the scene at hand. This doesn’t make them arrogant–there are many cultural cues that promote this model, not least the enduring Enlightenment view of individuals as autonomous actors who can drive their own fates.  Not that we can’t to a degree–but it takes some negotiating with a messier, more complex environment than the omniscient author model permits.

We could view the decision making scene differently, as one in which those making decisions are not only authors, but always also actors, and never omniscient.  This immediately forces us to see the unfolding narrative differently, as one in which there are multiple actors jostling to control next steps, and in which biases and partial knowledge are an inevitability, not something that can be overcome with greater quantities of data.

thoughts about teaching new-media narrative

Since I began my PhD in 2002 (I've finished it now, btw!) I've been thinking about how I might help to expand a readership which enjoys hyper-fiction, and also how I might encourage writers to try using new-media for their creative ideas. Part of the problem has been the complexity of the software needed, but Genarrator has been a big step for me towards teaching hyper-writing.  So, below are a few pedagogic procedures which have proven useful and productive in my teaching since Genarrator has been fully functional:

1. Really encourage students to find examples of interactive narrative for themselves - there's so much out there, and they will quite easily find examples they like. Getting students to feed back on the 'likes' and 'dislikes' is a big first step towards students understanding what works and doesn't work for readers. This procedure needs to be backed up maybe wit lectures on history and theory around hyper-text/narrative reception, and even game theory; but there's no really substitute for students experiencing pieces for themselves and analysing various elements of the work they experience. See 2. below for aspects students should be analysing.
2. My own research tells me that the following  are essential components to consider - navigation system, purposefulness of hyper-links (these need narrative importance, not just random linking for 'fun'), use of interactivity (is it meaningful or mere decoration?), narrative movement, site orientation tools, freedom of movement for the reader (ie you should be able to g where you want ideally, so if a narrative is strictly linear, it has better be very engaging!), flow (effort and reward should be balanced., ending (is it clear when this has been reached/Most readers want to know this).
3. When they are beginning to conceive narrative ideas, encourage students to think beyond the printed page - depending on their backgrounds and own reading/gaming/viewing/interacting preferences, they will come with a preconception of what an interactive narrative might be, but 'book' is often the pre-set. So, ask them to be sure that what they are creating could not work in print.
4. Planning the 'plot' on paper, by sketching and mapping, is very helpful when thinking about the hyper-structure. Plot is not a pre-fixed structure now, because the writer is offering choices, branching pathways, multiple endings, or 'versions' of the narrative which depends on what elements are read or not read (or maybe viewed/not viewed. or listened to/not listened too - remember this is a multi-media world). Family trees, flow-charts, storyboards are all possible approaches to designing narrative structure.
5. Students should create screen designs on paper, or a digital sketchbook, eg in Photoshop. Assuming your students are not specifically art and design students, simple sketches or even mock-ups done in Photoshop are really useful. Saves time, mistakes, frustration, and focusses on issues of navigation and interactivity, but 'seeing' these on paper before committing to screen.
6. Because I'm working with non-technical students, I encourage 'borrowing' from the web - allow students to openly find images, mp3 files, animations, video, etc, and acknowledge these usages in a bibliography. Certainly they can create their own materials if they are able, but why not use the WWW? Many of the pieces created last year by my BA Communication and Media students used stock images, for example, to good effect.
7. Road testing an chosen audience is vital - students should know who their audience is, as with any narrative medium. The should test their work and write a report on what their reader-testing tells them, prior to finalising designs and content.

Writing Tips: Metafiction or the Self-Conscious Narrative75
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By Anaya M. Baker

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Metafiction is a narrative technique in which the work self-consciously calls attention to itself as a work of fition. Similar to breaking the fourth wall in theater, metafiction suspends the disbelief of the reader by specifically addressing the reader or discussing its own status.

Metafiction is created in many different ways, but always includes an awareness within the fiction that it is indeed just that, a work of fiction.

Common techniques of metafiction include:

addressing the reader
a story within a story
a story about a someone reading or writing a book
characters that are aware that they are taking part in a story
commenting on the story while telling it, either in footnotes or within the text
a story with a narrator that exposes himself as both a character and the narrator

Source: M.C. Escher
Commonly regarded as an offshoot of the Postmodern literary movement, metafiction has emerged as a literary sub-genre in and of itself. Using various techniques that emphasize the story’s status as a fictional enterprise, the reader thus becomes more engaged, as an active participant, through a heightened sense of awareness regarding the relationship between reader and story.

Metafiction often uses traditional oral storytelling technique, in which the teller embodies the specific role of narrator, and is awarded certain liberties, for example commenting upon the tale or changing it to suit the intended purpose or audience.

When the author presents a work of fiction is presented as just that, a fictional construct (rather, than an exercise in realism), they are allowed more liberty in departing from conventional ideas as to the form and function of such work. The reader is then left often to draw his or her own conclusions, challenge assumption, or in other ways become drawn into the narrative process.

In addition, metafiction provides a mode in which many multi-cultural and female or feminist writers are able to include aspects of traditional storytelling, mythology, and folk-tales within the sphere of Western literature, facilitating cultural expression within a what was previously conceived of as a more rigid and exclusive domain.



Margaret Drabble - The Radiant Way
The Brief and Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
The Princess Bride by Arthur Goldman
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
Works by Tom Robbins, best known for Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
The World According to Garp by John Irving
Secret Window, Secret Garden by Stephen King
The Crying of Lot 49 by Stephen Pynchon
Terri Pratchett's Discworld Novels
Short stories by Jorge Luis Borges
Democracy by Joan Didion
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
Examples of Metafictional Novels
Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire
Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore
Jazz - Toni Morrison
Many of Milan Kundera's works, best known for the Unbearable Lightness of Being
Life of Pi - Yann Martell
Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis
Works by Umberto Eco such The Name of the Rose, Foucalt's Pendulum
J.M. Coetzee - Slow Man
The Blind Assassin and The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Orlando - Virginia Woolf
Chuck Palahniuk - Diary, Fight Club, Haunted
Running in the Family - Michael Ondaatje
Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs
Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction (New Accents)
Amazon Price: $27.14
List Price: $34.95
Further Reading on Metafiction
Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction - Patricia Waugh

(New York: Routledge, 1984.)

Reference to this book can be found in almost every article on Metafiction, making it an important source for anyone seeking to understand or study this genre. Bernd Engler says that Waugh’s “defenition of metafiction is nowadays ubiquitously quoted whenever critics deal with metafiction.”

The book is a useful treatise on the genre, its associated literary technique, and the historical, political and socio-economic factors that gave rise to its prominent position among contemporary literature. Even beyond an explanation of the phenomenon however, Waugh’s work was instrumental in creating the current parameters through which metafiction is commonly evaluated or understood, providing distance from previous terminology such as postmodern irony. Includes an extensive list of works cited, useful for further research.

Metafiction - Bernd Engler.

The Literary Encyclopedia. 17 Dec. 2004

Web page presented by The Literary Encyclopedia, an authoritative and accredited source for information relating to authors, topics and works, written by field experts. The entry on metafiction is written by Bernd Engler, a chair of American Literature and Culture at Eberhard-Karls University in Tuebingen, Germany.

This is a broad, informative, and clearly articulated study on the history and debate regarding the usage of the term metafiction and its associated literary devices. Engler discusses the impact of metafiction on both writers of fiction as well as readers, providing a synopsis and critique of a sample of works considered to be metafiction, as well as works on metafiction as a subject. Engler also provides discussion of Patricia Waugh’s book on metafiction, a work often cited yet rarely critiqued.

Mind over meta: a narcissistic prefix - William Safire

The New York Times. 26 Dec. 2005: OPINION

This short newspaper article provides a brief explanation of the popularity of the term metafiction, and its base meta by Safire, a journalist, author, and notably a Pulitzer-winning longtime contributor to the New York Times. Safire is well known for his series on the etymology of popular words and phrases.

While intended towards the casual reader interested in the linguistic theory behind popular phrases, a bit of interesting insight into, as well as quotes regarding, the connotations related to the term are provided, both positive and negative. The claim is made that the terms meta and metafiction are vehicles primarily created by literary critics, though only as an opinion.

Margaret Drabble’s The Radiant Way: Feminist Metafiction - Pamela Bromberg

Novel: A Forum on Fiction 24.1 (Fall 1990): 5-25

Bromberg, a Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Simmon’s College, and the Director of their Graduate program in English, has written this article as a critical analysis of Drabble’s book The Radiant Way, though other woman authors such as Woolf and Austen are referenced.

The article provides an informative study of metafiction through a feminist lens for those who have not read Drabble’s book. Bromberg articulates a key precept of metafiction, the notion that metafictional stories are a “struggle to narrate stories that are true, rather than the stories we have been taught to expect by the weight of literary convention and tradition” (Bromberg). The article seeks to build understanding of the genre of metafiction, inasmuch as constructs of metafiction serves as a tool with which to analyze Drabble’s work.

Bromberg's article would be useful to those seeking to better understand metafiction and its function, especially as it may apply to women writers, however the academic slant may make this a better for the scholar or student. Also provides an extensive list of works cited, both fictional novels and literary analysis that would be useful for further reading. You will need access to JSTOR to read the full article.

 
Notes on Gérard Genette's 
Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method
(Discours du récit [1972])

Gérard Genette
(b. 1930)
Addendum to Notes for MLLL 4063: Early Literary Criticism (OU, Fall 2006)
Course taught by 
Prof. A. Robert Lauer
GÉRARD GENETTE:
NARRATIVE DISCOURSE: AN ESSAY IN METHOD (Discours du récit [1972]) [Eng. trans. by Jane E. Lewin, Foreword by Jonathan Culler {Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press}]: I. TIME: A. Order, B. Duration, C. Frequency; II. MOOD, and III. VOICE.
     FOREWORD (by Jonathan Culler): This is a systemic theory of narrative.  Wayne Booth�s The Rhetoric of Fiction is primarily limited to problems of narrative perspective and point of view.  Gérard Genette, along with Roland Barthes and Tzvetan Todorov, are structuralists; as such, they are not interested in interpreting literature but in investigating its structures and devices.  Structuralists devoted considerable attention to plot structure or the �grammar� of the plot.  Some of Genette�s ideas on TIME are that, with respect to ORDER, events occur in one order but are narrated in another [by means of  flashback {analepsis}, foreshadowing {prolepsis}, beginning in medias res, etc.]; with respect to pace or DURATION [scene, summary], the narrative devotes considerable space to a momentary experience [a scene] and then leaps  over or swiftly summarizes a number of years [summary]; with respect to FREQUENCY, the narrative may repeatedly recount an [iterative] event that happened only once or may recount once what happened frequently [pseudo-iterative].  With respect to MOOD, Genette, in addition to mimesis and diegesis, include the scandalous (from a point of view) polymodality.  With respect to VOICE, Proust is �transgressive.�
     PREFACE:  This is a structuralist study of Marcel Proust�s A la recherche du temps perdu (1912-1927) [Remembrance of Things Past (Eng. 1934)].  It is a method of analysis and a theory of narrative or narratology.
     INTRODUCTION: �Narrative� (récit) is 1) the oral or written discourse that undertakes to tell of an event or a series of events, 2) the succession of events, real or fictitious, that are the subjects of this discourse, and to their several relations of linking, opposition, repetition, etc., and 3) the event (but not the one recounted but) that consists of someone recounting something: the act of narrating taken in itself.  The word �story� (histoire) refers to the signified or narrative content; diegesis refers to the story as signifier (the statement, discourse, or narrative text itself):
 

Signified (content) Story > histoire > narrative (content)
Signifier (form) Narrative > récit > Diegesis > discourse > narrating (form)

Tzvetan Todorov
(b. 1939)

(b. 1939)
Tzvetan Todorov, « Les Catégories du récit littéraire », Communications 8 (1966): 
     TENSE: by which to express the relationship between the time of the story and the time of the discourse (and its temporal distortions or infidelities to the chronological order of events). 
     ASPECT: The way in which the story is perceived by the narrator (vision: point of view).  Narrative frequency.
     MOOD (modalities, forms, degrees of the narrative): The type of discourse (register or distance: showing [representation <mimesis: perfect imitation>] and telling [narration: diegesis: pure narrative]) used by the narrator.
VOICE: Mode of action of the verb in its relation with the subject.

Genette�s Five Categories: ORDER, DURATION, and FREQUENCY (which deal with time), MOOD, and VOICE.

I. TIME: 
     CHAPTER 1: A. ORDER:
     With respect to narrative time:  a) there is the time of the thing (histoire [erzählte Zeit: story time]) told (the signified) and b) the time of the narrative or récit (the signifier [Erzählzeit: narrative time]). 
     ANACHRONIES: These are all forms of discordances between the two temporal orders of story and narrative (since there is no perfect temporal correspondence between the two).  Anachrony (starting in medias res, ab ovo, in ultimas [extremas] res, retrospections [analepsis] {lepse > taking}, flashforwards or anticipations [prolepsis], ellipsis, paralipsis, returns, etc.) is one of the traditional resources of literary narration. 
     REACH, EXTENT: An anachrony can reach into the past or the future from a �present� moment.  The temporal distance covered is the anachrony�s reach.  The anachrony itself can also cover a duration of story that is more or less long: this is its extent.
     ANALEPSES (recalls): An anachrous (earlier) narrative (�then�) that is temporarily second or subordinate to the first (first narrative, �now�).  The secondary or subordinate narrative is �external� [whose reach is outside the temporal field of the first narrative] to the first (it [as an antecedent to the first narrative] never interferes with the first narrative).  There are also internal [whose reach is inside the temporal field of the first narrative] (heterodiegetic) analepses [these deal with a character recently introduced whose �antecedents� the narrtor wants to shed light on] and mixed analespsis.  There are also internal homodiegetic analepses (internal analepses that deal with the same line of action as the first narrative [repeating analepses or returns by which the narrative retraces its own path, also called Rückgriffe or �retroceptions�]).  Completing analepses or returns comprise the retrospective sections that fill in, after the event, an earlier gap in the narrative.  These earlier gaps can be called ellipses (breaks in the temporal continuity).  A Paralipsis is a lateral (or sidestepped) ellipsis (e.g., when narrating one�s family in the past one systematically conceals [puts aside] the existence of one person).  In retrospections, there are also iterative ellipses (ellipses dealing not with a single portion of elapsed time but with several portions taken as if they were alike and to some extent repetitive).  A partial analepsis [an interruprtion in the analepsis which gives a reader an isolated piece of information] occurs when a retrospection ends on an ellipsis without rejoining the first narrative.  A complete analepsis [which retrieves the whole of the narrative�s antecedents] is a retrospection which rejoins the first narrative (at the moment it was first interrupted). 
     PROLEPSES: Anticipation or temporal prolepsis is less frequent in Western literature (plot of predestination).  The first-person narrative lends itself better than any other to anticipation.  There are internal and external prolepses.  Digressions, epilogues, and allusions are external prolepses.  In Proust, they authenticate the narrative of the past. There are iterative prolepses (frequency).  Repeating prolepses play the role of advance notice (of a nearby resolution).  There are also advance mentions (simple markers without anticipation, like introducing a character who will speak later).  There are also false advance mentions or snares (as in detective stories) [but a false snare may become a genuine advance mention].  All prolepses are abrupt interruptions (some partial [�to anticipate for a moment          . . .�], and some that return to point zero [�I must now return to my interrupted narrative�]).  Anachronic narrative gives one a sense of omnitemporality.
     ACHRONY: Second-degree prolepses, analepses on prolepses, prolepses on analepses.  Double anachronies (�It would happen later, as we have already seen,� �It had already happened, as we will see later�).  When later is earlier, and earlier later, defining the direction of movement becomes a delicate task.  Open analepses are analepses whose conclusion cannot be localized.  Some events may also lack a temporal reference and become atemporal.  An event that is dateless and ageless is an achrony.  There are also achronic structures and geographic (instead of temporal) orderings (syllepses), present, e.g., in voyage narratives.  There are also thematic syllepses in episodic novels with multiples stories (groupings by place or by story instead of by time). 

TIME:
     CHAPTER 2: B. DURATION: 
     ANISOCHRONIES: No one can measure the duration of a narrative.  Nothing allows us to determine a �normal� speed of execution.  The reference point is degree zero.  A scene with dialogue gives us a sort of equality between the narrative section [the manner of telling] and the fictive section what is told.  A scene with dialogue has only a kind of conventional equality between narrative time and story line.  Speed is the relationship between a temporal dimension and a spatial dimension.  A narrative can do without anachronies but not without anisochronies, or effects of rhythm.  Diegetic time is almost never indicated (or inferable) with the precision that would be necessary.  The relations between external divisions (parts, chapters, etc.) and internal narrative articulations mainly determine the rhythm of a narrative (e.g., Combray, 140 pp, 10 years; Un amour de Swann, 150 pp, 2 years, etc.).  In Proust, chronology is neither clear nor coherent.  It also tends to become discontinuous. 
     The four basic relationships that have become the canonical forms of novel tempo (the four narrative movements) are: 1) ellipsis, 2) descriptive pause, 3) scene (as in dialogue, which realizes conventionally the equality of time between narrative and story), and 4) summary.  If ST designates story time, NT pseudo-time (or conventional time), ? > infinitely greater, and < ? infinitely less, we have the following:
 

PAUSE: NT = n, ST = 0.  Thus: NT ? > ST
SCENE: NT = ST
SUMMARY: NT < ST
ELLIPSIS: NT= 0, ST = n.  Thus: NT < ? ST
There is no NT > ST for summary (which would be a scene in slow motion).  Pure dialogue cannot be slowed down [NB by ARL: but it can in film].  Big scenes in novels are extended by descriptive pauses or various insertions (analepses, prolepses, etc.).
     SUMMARY: Summary is the most usual transition between two scenes, the �background� against which scenes stand out, and thus the connective tissue par excellence of novelistic narrative, whose fundamental rhythm is defined by the alternation of summary and scene.  Most retrospective sections belong to this type of narration.  One of the most important and frequent uses of the summary is to convey rapidly a sketch of past life.  They can serve as recapitulations where the narrator tells us all we have to know.
     PAUSE: Descriptions (which take a lot of written space).  Epic ecphrasis (Shield of Achilles in Iliad, Book 18).  [METALEPSIS is when the narrator pretends to enter, with or without the reader, into the diegetic universe <Delicado in La loçana andaluza, Hitchcock in all his films>]  In descriptive passages the general movement of the text is governed by the step or the gaze of one or several characters.  The omniscient narrator wears Gyges�s ring to make him invisible as he surfs through the narrative.  In Proust, his descriptions are narrative and analytical impressions. 
     ELLIPSIS: Temporal ellipses are Paralipsis, that is, when one leaves aside lateral omissions.  A Definite Ellipsis is when an ellipsis is indicated (�Two years passed, . . .�); an Indefinite Ellipsis is when an ellipsis is not indicated (�Many years passed, . . .�).  There are also Explicit Ellipses (�Two years later, . . .�), Characterizing Ellipses (�Some years of happiness passed, . . .�), Implicit Ellipses (whose very presence is not announced in the text and which the reader can infer only from some chronological lacuna or gap in narrative continuity), and Hypothetical Ellipsis (impossible to localize and revealed after the event by an analepsis [trips to Germany, etc.]).  Ellipses represent a practically nonexistent portion of text. 
     SCENE: In the traditional novelistic alternation between scene (dramatic) and summary (non-dramatic = narrated), the scene deals with the strong periods of the action coinciding with the most intense moments of the narrative (while the weak ones [functioning as waiting rooms forming a liaison with scenes] are summed up in a summary). 

TIME:
     CHAPTER 3: C. FREQUENCY:
     SINGULATIVE / ITERATIVE: Narrative (or the relations of) frequency (repetition) between the narrative (story) and the diegesis is what grammarians call aspect. An event happens and can happen again or be repeated.  The repetition is a mental construction.  A narrative may tell once what happened once, n times what happened n times, n times what happened once, once what happened n times.  These are the four types of relations of frequency:
 

1N/1S: Narrating once what happened once: �Yesterday I went to be early.� This is a singulative narrative or singular scene.
nN/nS: Narrating n times what happened n times: �Monday I went to bed early, Tuesday I went to bed early, Wednesday I went to be early, etc.� This is an anaphoric singulative type, a relation of frequency between narrative and story. 
nB/1S: Narrating n times what happened once: �Yesterday I went to bed early, yesterday I went to bed early, yesterday I went to bed early, etc.� The same event can be told several times not only with stylistic variations, but with variations in �point of view,� as in Rashomon.  Children love to be told the same story several times.  Repeating narrative: where the recurrences of the statement do not correspond to any recurrence of events.
1N/nS: Narrating one time (or rather: at one time) what happened n times.  : Monday I went to be early, Tuesday, etc.� Iterative or frequentative narrative functionally subordinate to singulative scenes.  Description.  Moral portrait.
Generalizing or external iterations.  Internal or synthesizing iteration (where the iterative syllepsis extends not over a wider period of time but over the period of time of the scene itself).  Pseudo-iteratives scenes (by their wording in the imperfect they appear to happen several times: �the monologue was spoken not once but a hundred times�).  In Proust there is the �singularism� of the spatial sensitivity and the �iteration� of the temporal sensitivity. 
     DETERMINATION, SPECIFICATION, EXTENSION: Singular units are defined first by their diachronic limits or determination (between the end of June and the end of September in 1890), and then by their specification (the rhythm of recurrence: one day out of seven).  Then there is the extension (a Sunday in summer).  There are definite internal determinations (�I never thought again of this page�) and indefinite (�Starting from a certain year�). [RE-DO THIS]
     INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DIACHRONY: [RE-VISIT].
     ALTERNATION, TRANSITIONS: Between summary and scene in the classical novel (or of the singulative and the iterative in Proust).
     Abruption: the figure by which one removes the customary transitions between the parts of a dialogue, or before direct speech, in order to make its presentation more animated and more interesting. 
     THE GAME WITH TIME: In traditional narrative, analepsis (an aspect of sequence) most often takes the form of summary (an aspect of duration, or of speed); summary frequently has recourse to the services of the iterative (an aspect of frequency); description is almost always at the same time pinpointed, durative, and iterative.
     Interpolations, distortions, temporal condensations: Proust�s novel is one of Time ruled, captured, bewitched, subverted, perverted.

II.  CHAPTER 4: MOOD:
     NARRATIVE MOODS: Since the function of narrative is not to give an order, express a wish, state a condition, etc., but simply to tell a story and therefore to �report� facts (real or fictive), the indicative is its only mood.  Mood is the name given to the different forms of the verb that are used to affirm more or less the thing in question, and to express the different points of view from which the life or the action is looked at.  Indeed one can tell more or tell less what one tells, and can tell it according to one point of view or another.  When a novel takes a participant�s �vision� or point of view it takes a perspective with regard to the story.  Distance and perspective are the two chief modalities of that regulation of narrative information that is mood. 
     DISTANCE: There are two narrative modes (Plato, Republic, Book III): a) according to whether the poet himself is the speaker (pure narrative: Homer), or b) whether the poet delivers a speech as if he were someone else (imitation or mimesis: Ulysses telling a story).  Pure narrative is more distant than imitation, for it says less, and in a more mediated way (indirection and condensation are two distinctive features of pure narrative).  No narrative can show or imitate the story it tells.  All it can do is tell it in a manner which is detailed, precise, alive, and in that way give more or less the illusion of mimesis, for narration (oral or written) is a fact of language and language signifies without imitating.  There is also dialogue in indirect style and dialogue in direct style.
     NARRATIVE OF EVENTS: The narrative of events is always narrative, that is, a transcription of the supposed non-verbal into the verbal.  Showing can only be a way of telling.  Mimesis: maximum of information and a minimum of the informer.  Diegesis: a minimum of information and a maximum presence of the informer.  Proust�s novel is full of information and is, hence, �mimetic.� The narrator�s presence is constant.  The narrator as producer of metaphors. 
     The best narrative form is the story told as if by a character in the story, but told in the third person (a narrator who is not one of the characters but takes the point of view of one).  A character in the first person rarely succeeds in conveying the illusion of presentness and immediacy.  Far from facilitating the hero-reader identification, it tends to appear remote in time (the essence of this novel is retrospective: time has lapsed since the fictional time of the events of the story and the narrator�s actual time in recording those events).  When one writes a story in the third person from a past perspective, the illusion is created that the action is taking place. 
     NARRATIVE OF WORDS: Three states of characters� (uttered / inner) speech:
     1) Narratized or narrated speech is the most distant and reduced (�I informed my mother of my decision to marry Albertine� [uttered speech]; �I decided to marry Albertine� [inner speech]).
     2) Transposed speech in indirect style (�I told my mother that I absolutely had to marry Albertine� [uttered speech]; �I thought that I absolutely had to marry Albertine� [inner speech]).  Free indirect style: where economizing on subordination allows a greater extension of the speech by the absence of a declarative verb: �I went to find my mother: it was absolutely necessary that I marry Albertine� (uncertain whether it�s uttered or inner speech). 
     3) The most mimetic form is where the narrator pretends to give the floor to his character: �I said to my mother (or: I thought): it is absolutely necessary that I marry Albertine.� This reported speech is a dialogue (monologue) in the �mixed� narrative first of the epic and then of the novel (mixing diegesis and mimesis).  [�She told me to bid you good day� is indirect discourse]. 

Interior monologue (or rather, immediate speech) takes the immediate form of the stage.  The relationship between �immediate speech� and �reported speech� depends on the absence or presence of a declarative introduction (example: Molly Brown�s monologue in James Joyce�s Ulysses).  Difference between an �immediate monologue� and �free indirect style�: In free indirect speech, the narrator takes on the speech of the character (that is, the character speaks through the voice of the narrator, and the two instances are then merged).  In immediate speech, the narrator is obliterated and the character substitutes for him.  [An interior monologue like the one by Molly Brown is a discourse without an auditor and unspoken, by which a character expresses his most intimate thoughts, those closest to the unconscious, prior to all logical organization, or thought in its dawning state, expressed by means of direct phrases reduced to their syntactical minimum, so as to give the impression of a hodgepodge].

PERSPECTIVE: Narrative perspective is the second mode of regulating information.  Point of view. 
 

Internal analysis of events  Outside observation of events
Narrator as a character in the story 1.  Main character tells his story 2. Minor character tells main character�s story
Narrator not a character in the story 4. Analytic or omniscient author tells story 3.  Author tells story as observer
Three types of novelistic situations:
1.  The auktoriale Erzählsituation: that of the omniscient author (Tom Jones).
2.  The Ich Erzählsituation: where the narrator is one of the characters (Moby Dick). 
3.  The personale Erzählsituation: where a narrative is conducted in the third person according to the point of view of a character (The Ambassadors).

Friedman (8 types):
Two types of omniscient narrating (with or without authorial intrusions).
Two types of first person narrating: I-witness or I-protagonist.
Two types of selective omniscient narrating: with restricted point of view, either multiple or single. 
Two types of purely objective narrating: the dramatic mode and the camera (a recording, without selection or organization).

Wayne Booth:
Voice: implied author and narrator (a narrator who is in turn dramatized or undramatized, reliable or unreliable).

Stanzel:
Narrative with omniscient author.
Narrative with point of view.
Objective narrative.
Narrative in the first person.

A three-term typology:
Narrative with omniscient narrator (�vision from behind�) or Narrator > Character (the narrator knows more than the character).
Narrator = Character (the narrator says only what a given character knows: narrative with a �restricted field� or �vision with�).
Narrator < Character: The narrator says less than the character knows.  This is objective or behaviorist narrative, or �vision from without.� 

Uspensky:
Constant point of view: fixed on a single character.
Variable.

FOCALIZATIONS:
1. Non-focalized narrative (narrative with zero focalization [without restrictions]).
2. Narrative with internal focalization, whether a) fixed, b) variable, or c) multiple [as in epistolary novels, or Rashomon] as in interior monologues.
3. Narrative with external focalization (adventure novels where the author does not tell us immediately all he knows).

ALTERATIONS:
Variable focalization of omniscience with partial restrictions of field.  Alterations are isolated infractions, when the coherence of the whole still remains strong enough for the notion of dominant mode/mood to continue relevant.  We are dealing with paralepses (taking up information [excess information] that should be left aside, as in �the young man did not understand his ruin� [the opposite of paralipsis, as in e.g., a detective story, where information cannot be divulged, or in Jules Verne�s Michel Strogoff]). 

POLYMODALITY:
The multiplicity of contradictory hypotheses in a narrative (the author�s, the narrator�s, or the character�s).  Double focalization: or double vision (concurrence between the �subjective� hero and the �objective� narrator).  A plural state of modality.

III. CHAPTER 5: VOICE:
     THE NARRATING INSTANCE:  Voice is the mode of action of the verb considered for its relations to the subject; the subject is the person who carries out or submits to the action as well as the person (the same or another one) who reports it.  Do not confuse [in fiction] the narrating instance with the instance of writing, the [fictional] narrator [sender] with the [real] author, or the [fictional] recipient [receiver, addressee of the [fictive] narrative with the [real] reader of the work. 

     TIME OF THE NARRATING: Time is more important than space in narrative.  At times the space is not even specified.  Also, the narrating can only be subsequent to what it tells (predictive narrative: prophetic, apocalyptic, oracular, astrological, chiromantic, cartomantic, oneiromantic).  In radio or TV reporting, the narrating follows the action closely, almost simultaneously, whence the use of the present tense.  From  the point of view of temporal position, there are four types of narrating: 
 

SUBSEQUENT: The classical (most frequent) position of the past-tense narrative.
PRIOR: Predictive narrative, generally in the future tense (dreams, prophecies) [this type of narrating is done with less frequency than any other]
SIMULTANEOUS: Narrative in the present contemporaneous with the action (this is the simplest form of narrating since the simultaneousness of the story and the narrating eliminates any sort of interference or temporal game).
INTERPOLATED: Between the moments of the action (this is the most complex) [e.g., epistolary novels]
NARRATIVE LEVELS:
First level recounts in narration are extradiegetic (as when a character narrates at the first level about, e.g., fictive memoirs [an �author� addressing his public]).  Events inside this recounting [by a character who tells his story to another character] are diegetic or intradiegetic.  Events inside this second degree told by other characters would be metadiegetic. 

METADIEGETIC NARRATIVE: Second-degree narrative goes back to the epic, as when Ulysses narrates to the Phaeacians. The metadiegetic narrative is a variant of the explanatory analepsis.

METALEPSES (�taking hold of (telling) by changing level�): Any intrusion by the extradiegetic narrator (author) into the diegetic universe that produces a sense of strangeness, humor, or the fantastic  (the author Delicado inside his own novel La loçana andaluza): a transgression.  Characters who escape from a painting, a photograph, etc., and defy verisimilitude.  If those characters are readers or spectators, we, the readers, might be fictitious.  Pseudo-diegetic (when someone else who has heard a story from another person tells the story himself).  The oracle of the Sphinx in Oedipus is a metadiegetic narrative.

PERSON: 
Heterodiegetic: The narrator is absent from the story he tells (Homer in Iliad).
Homodiegetic: The narrator is present as a character in the story he tells (Gil Blas).
Autodiegetic: The strong degree of the homodiegetic (Gil Blas), and not a secondary character, witness, or observer (Mr. Watson, I presume?). 

Narrative pathology: when a character switches from I to he, etc. 

The four basic types of narrator�s status are as follows:
 

LEVEL:
RELATIONSHIP: Extradiegetic Intradiegetic
Heterodiegetic Homer (narrator in the first degree, who tells a story he is absent from) Scheherazade (a narrator in the second degree who tells stories she is on the whole abent from)
Homodiegetic Gil Blas (a narrator in the first degree who tells his own story) Ulysses (in Books 9-12, where he becomes a narrator in the second degree who tells his own story)
THE NARRATEE: 
The extradiegetic narrator (author) can aim only at an extradiegetic narratee, who merges with the implied reader, in principle undefined (Sterne calls him Sir Critick).  A narrative is always addressed to someone.  Even a metadiegetic literary work like the Curious Impertinent (in Cervantes�s Don Quixote) aims at a reader who in principle is himself fictive.

COLOPHON: The real author of the narrative is not only he who tells it, but also, and at times even more, he who hears it.  And who is not necessarily the one it is addressed to: there are always people off to the side.

AFTERWORD: The goal of a literary work is to make the reader not a consumer but a producer of the text (Barthes, S/Z) [not readerly but writerly].


Roland Barthes
(1915-1980)