Narrator

What It Is: A structural element where the start/end of a story starts with the introduction of another story. Often this helps us understand the moral, show irony, or reveal different perspectives.

How to Annotate for It: One of the key things to watch for, once you recognize a Frame Narrative, is how the narrator continues to break the frame narrative throughout the story. They will often make an occassional address to the audience of the frame narrative to remind the reader of their presence.

What It Is: The proximity of a narrator to the setting, characters, and events. Based on a narrator’s experience and distance, they will emphasize certain things in a story. Our job is to explain how those experiences and distance shape the narrative and why it matters.

How to Annotate for It: Consider the following Factors Impacting Narrative Distance:

1. Physical Distance (locations)

2. Chronological Distance (closeness to time of the events)

3. Relational Distance (closeness based on relationships)

4. Emotional Distance (closeness based on similar/different experiences)

What It Is: A Narrative Framework that puts readers inside the mind of the narrator, including their thoughts and feelings. Imitates what it is like to be in someone’s head. Gives us a real-time look into the narrator’s ideas without clear interpretation or objective description.

How to Annotate for It: Stream of Consciousness uses few, if any transitions, often appears fragmented and even disorganized, and will include a free association of ideas to mirror being in someone else's mind.

What It Is: Narrators, whether the author, an unnamed narrator, or a character, have their own perspective they use to understand the world. Because of this, they have a bias about how they think the world should be oriented.

How to Annotate for It: Consider their tone in the diction, imagery, and details and how that might reveal the bias of the narrator. Next, think about the Narrative Distance as a way of explaining how the narrative bias impacts the narrator's perspective on the topic at hand.

What It Is: As narrators have their own perspective on the world, they want to make sure their version of the story they are telling supports that perspective. Sometimes this means they are lying (even if they don't realize they are lying) and they become unreliable narrators. We then have to unpack what the truth might be.

How to Annotate for It: Unreliable narrators are easiest to spot when we have multiple narrators presenting the same story from different perspectives. In this case, you will want to consider when the stories do not match up, who has a reason to lie (or who is partly insane), and how that fits their bias.