When you choose a witness narrator, it must be because you believe it’s the best way to tell the story.The Direct Observer point of view (also called the Third Person Objective) forces a writer to “show don’t tell.” Indeed, you can’t tell. This type of narrator is a character with his own function in the chain of events. The witness narrator can’t be identified with the author, and the author doesn’t take part in the story. The kind of language you choose will depend on your character’s distinctive features. For example, he could be a child and unable to explain the events with an adult’s vocabulary, or he could be a policeman who tells what happened as if he were writing a report. The witness narrator is a character in the story and thus has specific characteristics. This type of narrator establishes a deep connection with the reader. He/she makes the readers feel that the events he’s describing are real – just like when you hear something first hand. He merely describes what he has seen and suggests what he can’t see (always from his limited point of view). He/she describes and suggests.Īs a result of his restricted perspective, the witness narrator can’t explain why the other characters act one way or another, and he rarely makes value judgments. He can’t be everywhere and see everything, nor can he know what the other characters are thinking. He/she tells the story from his point of view and is limited by his own perceptions. The character who plays the role of witness is never the protagonist of the story’s events and tries to be as impartial as possible in his account of them. Brodie’s Report, by Jorge Luis Borges, is a good example of this type of narrator.Īs I have said before, there are many other types of witness narrators (some of them a mixture of those described above), but all of them share a series of features: 1.

Informant – he (or she) transcribes the events as if he were writing an official report and presents them as true. An example of this type of narrator is Sherlock Holmes’ assistant, Dr Watson. The Hive, by Camilo Jose Cela, would exemplify this type of witness narrator.Įyewitness – he (or she) recalls past events he watched first hand.

Impersonal witness – he (or she) behaves like a camera that just records what it sees, thus the readers feel as if they are watching a film. There are many different types of witness narrators, each with his distinctive features. This type of narrator doesn’t usually write about himself or herself. You just read the words of a witness narrator which is a role played by a character who tells the story in the third person (he isn’t the protagonist) and has the point of view of someone who has witnessed it either from the inside or from the outside. In the first page of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, the narrator makes a declaration of intent: “I prepare to leave on this parchment my testimony as to the wondrous and terrible events that I happened to observe in my youth, now repeating all that I saw and heard, without venturing to seek a design, as if to leave to those who will come after (if the Antichrist has not come first) signs of signs, so that the prayer of deciphering may be exercised on them.”

Observer narrator definition