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the mode of describing a character recalling something.

An appreciation of narration, as a fiction-writing mode, requires an understanding of the issues involved:
Choice of narrator

* Point of view

* Person

* Tense

* Obtrusiveness

* Tone

* Reliability

* Disguised narration

* Distance

CHOICE OF NARRATOR One of the most important decisions a fiction writer makes is the choice of narrator. According to Orson Scott Card, in Character & Viewpoint, "The story always has a narrator." Instead of the audience seeing events directly (as in plays and films), the story is unavoidably filtered through the perceptions of a narrator.

To understand the role of the narrator in written fiction, the writer must keep four mindsets in perspective.

* The author is a living, breathing person. He is the creator, doing the brainwork, making decisions, writing.

* The narrator is the teller of the story, the orator, doing the mouth work, or its in-print equivalent.

* The point-of-view character, if the story has any, is from whose consciousness the reader hears, sees, and feels the story.

* The reader is not merely the intended audience; he is a critical participant, reacting to the presentation, and thus influencing how the story is told, even before it is written.

An author's choice of narrator comes down to three alternatives:

* Self-narration by the author ("Now dear reader . . ." is an example of author self-narration, sometimes referred to as author intrusion);

* One or more of the characters in the story ("Call me Ishmael," from Moby Dick is an example from a story narrated by a point-of-view character, Ishmael.); or

* Some other assumed persona.

Each of these are valid choices for narrator, but few choices made by an author have more impact on how the reader will perceive the story and react to it.

POINT OF VIEW Once the author has decided who will tell the story (the author himself, a character, or some assumed persona), then he must decide from whose viewpoint the story will be told. The choices are:

* The author himself,

* A character, or

* Some assumed persona.

This may seem redundant, but:

* A self-narrating author may tell the story from his own point of view or he may tell it from the viewpoint of a character;

* A story narrated by a character would most likely be from the viewpoint of that character (as with Ishmael in Moby Dick), but the story could also be told from another character's point of view.

* An assumed persona may tell the story from his own point of view or from a character's point

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