Narrative Techniques and Literary Perspectives Explained

Nonprofessional Characters: Heterodiegetic Storytellers

Within this category, the narrator can be classified by their level of knowledge:

Omniscient: Dominates all narrative events; a singular voice controlling the entire situation.

Relative Knowledge: Handles only specific data; reality is fragmented and only partially understood.

Direct: Refers to character dialogue reproduced verbatim, which interrupts the narrative flow.
Indirect: The narrator dominates the discourse, reporting what characters say.
Free Indirect: The narrator appears to speak from within the characters, traditionally associated with the omniscient narrator.

Techniques derived from film and modern literature:

Mounting: Multiplicity of narrators and points of view with parallel narrative threads.
Racconto: An extended backward shift in time.
Flashback: A brief recollection of past events.
Premonition or Prospecting: A vision of a possible future.
Flash Forward: A short projection into the future.
Internal Monologue: Verbalization of a character's mental contents in a logical order to reveal interiority.
Soliloquy: A structured, logical internal monologue where the character dialogues with themselves.
Stream of Consciousness: Verbalization of mental contents as they appear in the unconscious; lacks logical structure and is often chaotic.

Fable (Story Time): Actions presented in a linear, causal, and chronological sequence.
Subject (Discourse Time): The aesthetic arrangement of events, which may break the linear timeline.
Reference Time: The historical reality, social context, and cultural period of the writer.

Note: Anachronies represent a deliberate break with the fable.