In an article for Writer’s Digest, Kenan Orhan says the narrator’s voice in your story is as important as your own. “There is setting and character and plot and tension and conflict—but all of this, from the very first sentence to the last, is conveyed to the reader through a narrator, and the narrator’s voice is a filter for how and what information is revealed,” he says.
An important early question to ask when you begin writing is: Who is telling the story? Many writers don’t give much thought to this question, particularly if they are working in first person. The narrator seems evident. But that leaves out opportunity for adding thoughtful nuance to the work. “Perhaps they are a narrator who is talking to an imagined reader in an imagined room, describing the story as a member of its periphery,” Orhan says. “Or perhaps they are very calm and distanced and practically a stenographer of the tale; or perhaps they are supernatural, omnipresent, and opinionated, constantly passing judgment on the deeds of the characters and introducing a great deal of dramatic irony to the piece.”
Careful consideration of your narrator’s voice will also reveal how they feel about the events they are about to relate. Is your narrator’s voice contemplative, tinged with regret, accepting, pained, removed, or confrontational? This perspective and outlook will seep into how you create your other elements, including your setting, the character arc, and narrative language. “You can find the music of their speech, the tension they can create with their access (or lack thereof) to the thoughts and emotions of others, the tricks they can play on the cast,” Orhan says. “It’s the job of the writer to establish the pattern very quickly (which becomes almost like a social contract) and then stick with it to help the reader remain in the fictive dream.”
