You’re writing a story, but who is telling it? Through whose eyes does the narrative unfold? Whose feelings and perceptions flavor your description and tone? In a new blog post, Mary Carroll Moore says that deciding who tells your story – and when – is as important as what story you tell.
“Is the narrator speaking in real time, as the story is happening?” Moore asks. “Or from what’s called the ‘retrospective’ point of view, looking back from the distance of years?”
Real-time narration – telling your story as though it’s happening to your characters in the moment – adds more tension to the page. On the other hand, a retrospective point of view allows you to add perspective.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee took advantage of both. The story is told by Scout as an adult, looking back on events from her childhood. This allows her to comment on events from a viewpoint her younger self could not have. However, the events happen to young Scout, lending some immediacy to events and allowing adults, including her father, add perspective.
Novelists often choose real-time narration for its immediacy, or some mixture of real-time and retrospective. Memoirs almost always take a retrospective approach, as the author is reflecting back on events that shaped them.
