Narratorship

Narratorship refers to the status, role, and methods of the narrator within a narrative, including who tells the story, the narrative voice they employ, and the authority they exercise over information. It focuses on how the act of storytelling is constructed and how the narrator’s presence influences what readers or viewers come to know.

In narratology, narratorship is concerned with the relationship between narrator and narrative, including reliability, degree of omniscience, and narrative distance. It interacts with concepts of point of view and focalization, and differentiates the storyteller from the author’s private intentions. Narratorship can be explicit through direct narration or implicit through diaries, documents, or cinematic devices.

Types of narrators include first-person narrators, who tell the story from their own perspective; second-person narrators, who address the reader as "you"; and third-person narrators, who may be omniscient, limited to a character’s inner view, or switch between perspectives. Within these, reliability varies: reliable narrators generally provide a coherent account, while unreliable narrators invite doubt about credibility. Works may employ multiple or shifting narrators and metafictional frames that call attention to the act of narrating itself.

Techniques associated with narratorship include free indirect discourse, direct and indirect speech, interior monologue, and narrative digressions. The narrator’s voice can be a vivid character or a distant, authorial presence, and its choices affect credibility, bias, and alignment with events.

Narratorship spans literature, film, and other media, where voice-over, framing, and perspective control how audiences interpret storyworlds. Notable uses include unreliable first-person narrators, restrained observational narration, and multiperspective structures that reveal subjectivity and complexity in narrative experience.