Talk:Rhetoric and Composition/Print version

Narration IS a telling but more than that it is a showing through actions proper, that is, what the characters do, say, and think when necessary. A story, then, is always told by a narrator--either an objective, God-like narrator or a subjective human character. The omniscient, God-like narrator tells the truth because he can't do otherwise. He tells the story strictly through dialogue (Effaced Omniscient Narrator), by focusing on only one character whose mind he reveals to us (Central Intelligence Omniscient Narrator), by letting us into the mind of more than one character (a Roving Omniscient Narrator), or by getting us into the mind of all of the characters (a Hovering Bard Omniscient narrator). The subjective narrator, on the other hand, can get us into only that narrator's mind, and because he's human his story is subject to his limited perspective and understanding and thus not as reliable as the omniscient narrator and by force is unreliable. These are not "rules" but simply the nature of story-telling as shown by the vast work of stories of craft and vision of the highest order of writers. These observations do not pertain to genre fiction such as first-person detective and "popular" fiction, that is, non-literary fiction.