Narrative Techniques 1



(a) The story within the story.  With this technique you start by telling the story yourself, and then one of your
characters takes over as the narrator.  Here is an example.

     I shall always remember the winter nights when we lived with our grandfather in China.  Each night he would 
sit down in front of the fire, wait for us to be quiet, and then tell us a story of wonder and mystery.  On one night in
particular, he looked very unhappy.
     "What story will you tell us tonight?" I asked.  He 
merely shook his head.  
     "Grandfather!" my little brother said, alarmed. "Please
tell us a story!"
     Grandfather looked very reluctant but at last he looked 
up at us and spoke.
	"All right," he nodded, "I shall tell you a story.
But you must promise never to tell this story to anyone else.  Do you promise?"  We looked at him surprised.  He had 
never made this request before.  "Do you promise?" he repeated, louder.
     "Yes!" we said in chorus.  "We promise."
      And so the story began...
* * * * *

One dark winter's night in northern China, many centuries ago, 
a man came walking into a lonely village.  He was no 
ordinary man and he would change the lives of the villagers for ever.
[etc etc etc]



(b) The conversational narrator.  This technique involves a narrator who speaks to the reader in a very "chatty"
(conversational) way, and who uses language which is more usual in spoken English than in written English.  A good 
example of this is found at the very beginning of the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied 
and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it.





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