Narrators 

from the 7:00, I can't easily agree with the narrator of The Stranger is an absolute psychopath. I believe him is the substitute of the author, Albert Camus, who is obviously considered not to have had any psychopathic problem. I believe it's the matter of style of him.

Extra-homodiegetic? More like extra homosexual!! Am I right, fellas?!

N a r r a t o l o g i s t

Yay! Bird.

I can't wait to flex forty minutes of knowledge on my English teacher, only to be butchered by my ignorance and poor understanding of everything else in the subject. It will still feel good, and for those few seconds I can feel like an intellectual genius who figured out a cure for 2020.

the fact that you committed so hard powerpoint projection being misaligned as to actually include the weird clipping off the edge of the whiteboard really makes the joke land.

25:54 My immediate thought went to Ever After High, funnily enough. I understand it's probably not a story most subscribers of this channel would engage with, but it did something fun with its narrators that I haven't seen elsewhere. One of the characters, based on the Mad Hatter, is able to hear and respond to the narrators, establishing that they exist somewhat in the story. Everybody else cannot, and the narrators themselves do not affect the story. The narrators are explicitly nothing but narrators, and yet are still present in the story as it unfolds.

When you said "...which requires that we talk about Frame Narrative," I half expected the Mario 64 File Select theme to start playing. I wonder if a half-A press counts as homodiegetic or heterodiegetic.

Newwww to the channel and you mentioned both Dracula and Frankenstein in adjacent breaths. It took me ONE breath to scream 'YES, FINALLY!" These are classics in their theme and story (classics mostly nowadays meaning old and groundbreaking) but also the WAY they are told is just as noteworthy. Within the last few years, a mailing list called Dracula Daily releases the epistolary letters and writings in the story by the day they take place, while the book itself confines each perspective to its own segment and timeline. This 'remix' of the story timeline has provided readers with a new perspective of the book (arguably one that is ergodic but without the reader's effort, which in itself is confusing to quantify within the 2 hours of your recent video.) Juxtaposition of narration can add so much to a story, and both Dracula and Frankenstein are overlooked in that they deliver a new kind of story but through a framing which made it all the more explosive to read and experience. What I mean to say is, Thank you!

Man, I adore your videos. Always makes me eager to start writing again.

This video has been out less then a day, and I'm already watching it a third time. I love when you break down writing mechanics and discuss the form books are written is.

After watching this, while it is a good video, i am glad i choose a different subject at university.

I wish my english profs were half as good at explaining concepts like these.

Just wanted to say, i'm horrible with literature (german schools and their choice of books also didn't make it very fun), but i could and have spend/spent hours listening to you ranting/explaining

At first I just thought you were switching between the projection and the world outside of it for funsies. I finally realized what you were doing and how it ties into the topic of the video at 40:51, when you were inside the projection but the point of view is from the outside. Gave me actual chills, nice one

what made me think of an intra-heterodiegetic narrator is the narrator for Good Omens because the narrator is god, someone that exists in the story but she doesn't like really interact and instead tells the reader what's happening in the world she created

Oh wow, the editing polish leveled up. Like, a lot.

My narration style, even when not narrating as a particular character, is pretty jokey and stream of consciousness most of the time, and is sorta like the narrator is having a super casual, one-sided conversation with the reader rather than just saying what happens. I'm not sure how to describe it in detail, but what I can say for it is that its biggest influence is the way Homestuck does its narration, since its style was really unique and helped me get out of the rut that writing classes in school always put me in wherein I had to write a "certain way" or it wasn't "correct". It's a really make or break narration style, either you love it and it makes the reading experience so much more fun, or you can't stand it and it ruins the whole thing, depending on who you are and what you're looking for. In specific, a story I'm currently writing uses a sort of 3rd person internal focalisation, but the narrator, while generally seeing things from the perspective of the given character, and knowing their thoughts, sees their perspective out of time. The narrator knows what's going to happen to the character in the future while the character doesn't, but they only know it from that character's future perspective, so they can seem omniscient but really aren't. Specifically, the narrator in this story is a powerful item that comes into the possession of multiple characters, and any character who currently, has previously, or will later use the item has the entire timeline of their life made available to the narrator to draw from. While the narrator primarily focuses on the here and now, they occasionally reference moments in these characters' futures or pasts, with particular focus placed on times in the characters' lives that the item was actually there for, and tends to prefer to tell the story from the pov of whoever has the item currently unless it finds another perspective particularly interesting. The narrator speaks in 1st person as the item, but in the actual events of the story, it's ambiguous whether the item is even sentient, whether they even *could* narrate like this, so it's sort of 1st and 3rd person simultaneously? I'm not sure if that counts as polyphony though since it's still just one narrator. While it's never stated in the story, an observant reader can pick up on the pattern of who the narration focuses on and when, to determine who's most likely to have possessed the item, or who will in the future. I'm curious about your thoughts on this. And also, what would you even call this narration style? Because it doesn't seem to quite line up with any of the options presented in this video, unless I'm just not seeing a technicality here that would help put it in a certain box. Is there a different model of narration styles that might account for this?

You know it's a good video when you feel like you could pass a vocabulary test after

One of my favourite novels "The pledge" by Friedrich Dürrenmatt has one of the most interesting way of narration. The main story is about an author of crime novels meeting with a retired police chief, that happens in forst person from the way of the fictional author. The crime story, a case that in switzerland that is unsolved to this day is entirely told in quotations. The retried chief tells a story about one of his former detectives who wanted to solve when it happend on his last day of service. Interestingly those two stories converge when we meet the former detective. I don't want to tell too much but it is a genius way of storytelling that none of the movie adaption of which there are several in different languages capture due to not having this narration.

As a fellow art school survivor a can I attest that an art degree is basically a fancy place matt.

Honestly, the last couple of videos I've typed out rants with my thoughts on whatever topic you covered. But I'll just summarize without prompting a huge response. You're always recommending books for me to read and that's a gift I greatly appreciate. I find myself moving more towards where mediums can combine and that means novels have been off my radar. But I'll have to pick out more carefully what I read, watch, and play and I'm happy to give these books a try. Sincerely, an "aspiring writer," comic creator, reviewer to be, and long time viewer.

I love how passionate you got at the end. The whole thing about how narrator is apart of the palette really stuck with me.

Incredible video, your passion for literature always makes watching your content an absolute blast. Can't wait to see more!

Woah! The new visuals look amazing!

I love your editing style, and since I also happen to be... a bit of a literary nerd, I always love hearing your takes on things I may or may not know of. Basically, good video, keep it up :)

What a fantastic video! The explanations are clear and extremely entertaining. Your passion for this topic is energising!

Fantastic video! You have really upped your game from your older vids. I'm really looking forward to whatever you do next.

Your videos are always worth the wait and are thoroughly enjoyable. 👍

This was so so good!!!!

I really like your voice

It's always good to look back at these after a awhile.

CCC, you literally are out here not only being more interesting to listen to, but are also giving me far far far more depth to the subjects while also keeping it more concise than my actual english teacher. Thank you.....something something time to go flex on my teacher.

"Diegesis diegesis diegesis diegesis diegesis diegesis diegesis.... diegesis." ~ Jeanette at some point

This is good af content! Got lost in terminology closer to the end a couple times, but still amazing experience!

I love your videos, i am Very happy to have discovered your channel

May this inspire us all to knock down the writer's block

TERRY PRATCHETT MENTION!! +9,999,999,999 respect points Love your channel btw, so glad i came across it

I love dapper birds explaining to me rich literary ideas and storytelling techniques. Thank you fancy bird. You're beautiful.

the fact that you misaligned the powerpoint from the background gave me a good chuckle

Haven't seen your videos in awhile, but you popped up in my recommended list and I'm glad I gave it a watch! Booktube is awesome, and now I will look at narration in literature and film in new ways ^_^

Love your work man! Your new format is great! I’d also like to recommend author Anthony Ryan to anyone who loves multiple narrators and having them be extensively distinct from one another, plus overall fantastic storytelling. Keep up the great work Bookbird!

The opening chapter for the fantasy novel A Gutter Prayer tells the story of a crew of thieves from the perspective of the building they break into (which ends up devoured in a fire.) The rest of the book is a mixture of unfocalised omniscient narrator telling us the story of the world, and focalised third person perspectives from the main characters. It's a great book if you're into imaginative, weird, chaotic fantasy with a very distinctive style and voice :)

The entertainment value from the start has me super invested already.

The Stanley Parable is a great game with a focus on a narrator :D

Ayyy good to see you again Birb

righeously crescendoing into "CAPITAL R WRITTEN" without losing a beat or an ounce of confidence cost me a lung and it was 100% worth it lmaooo

I don't have any actual schooling in more advanced writing so these videos help a lot. I'd say that my style of narration would be internal focalization, though the POV character changes to give the reader glimpses into each character. One character who isn't used to being in a city describes it as an oppressive and disorganized maze, another describes it as an orderly row of streets and buildings.

As someone who had to take college classes to learn about words like "phenomenology" and descending from there... yeah most of what I got out of it is "getting war flashbacks" today. I was definitely not even ready for those discussions as a 19 year old, and I don't get to use any of it at my job today. I will, however, get good use out of this video as I read books going forward, having another aspect of the book to analyze and hopefully appreciate. 👍

THIS OPENING IS SO ENTERTAINING AHAHA

How the hell did I miss this! I love your work! Also I’d love to hear your thoughts about audiobooks. You mentioned that audio visual doesn’t spark the same as reading.

Raaaad as HECK man~! Thanks for your thoughts put down so nicely heck yeah!!

15:38 sounds to me like it's just the external story of how an internal story was told.

i found your channel a week or so ago and have been systematically watching every video! i really like your content, and this video was really interesting to me as an aspiring writer! my current story doesn't seem particularly well suited to a more unique narration just by it's construction, but now your video has me returning to my starting of a xenofiction story i had started roughing out the basic facts of. your video on xenofiction i watched just before that got it started lol. i have to say out of most narrative structures epistolary narratives have always been of particular interest, both Dracula as well as some of H.P. Lovecrafts works, in parts. i hope you do more videos focusing on the functioning parts of writing, you explain them well and it's interesting to hear your perspective on them! also if you are ever considering piers anthony's xanth series, which im working throught the first book of because i bought the damn thing and spoilers i hate it, it's a mixed bag. content wise for youtube analysis it would be a gold mine, but it's a genuinely uncomfortable read for me right now, due to it's less palatable treatment of female characters. and outlook on women in general. hope this message finds you in good health and i look forward to your future videos!

You make me feel smart and dumb at the same time great video my dude

So random thing I wanna point out, Frankenstein is written from the perspective of not-a-licensed-doctor Frankenstein telling his life story to an explorer who's writing it all down on a letter that's being read by his sister back home Also, at one point there's an extra layer of the monster telling Frankenstein HIS extensive life story in an extensive life story being transcribed by another person and read by another character

This is the first video I watched on the channel

Just watched this video after recently subscribing to you. Love the discussion you have here! My reading experience isn't quite as eclectic as yours, but I did read this book in one of my college classes called "The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," which pulls a really interesting sneaky midway through the story. At the start, the narrator comes off as third-person omniscient, someone who knows Oscar personally but is telling us this story from a distance. But about two-thirds of the way through, he actually shows up in the story! He's one of Oscar's friends, and he has a very minor role in the plot itself. I'm not sure how that fits in the diegetic model you discussed before. I guess he starts heterodiegetic but BECOMES homodiegetic later? It's a neat little trick, turning an objective third-person narrator into a first-person narrator when they sneak into the narrative. (There's also something very... romantic? about doing the same thing, but in a second-person narration instead, or vice-versa. But second-person does tend to get overlooked in these discussions.) Have you ever seen that in any other stories? Is this a lot more common than I'm familiar with, and I just don't have the reach of knowledge about it?

My film theory professor Bruce Kawin has written a book, Mindscreen, where he argues that a film can be narrated in the first-person.

if I could make a suggestion for a book series I've read that makes use of the perspective of multiple narrators for a wild adventure that (to me at least) almost comes across as a crazy D&D campaign, then I suggest the Dragon Lords trilogy by Jon Holland. (Fool's Gold, False Idols, Bad Faith).

I mainly choose to write in the first person, but in two stories I wrote in a written letter/journal where anything that happens outside of the written letters is in third person. I structured it this way because the written letters are the story and whatever happens outside those letters is only seen by God or a no body being.

i learnt more from this video then i did from going to a private school, time to see how this video compares to paying for an arts degree.

Here are my thoughts on each part- Part 1- Fascinating! While I have written anything new in several years (procrastination is one of my biggest vices), when it comes to my style of writing, I always stay in 3rd person because my perspectives switch among the chars. No matter what I am writing though, my biggest goal is for the reader to get 'envelop' into the worlds I create since I always write fiction and most of my stories are fantasy based. In one of my current stories, most of the perspective does come from my main char since she's now living in a new world so I wanted the reader to learn about this world through her eyes, but every now and then I'll switch it to either her new husband or her new family members. Because this story does have several plot twists though, I am very careful with my wording in what kind of information I give out to the reader. I do foreshadow things, it's one of my fav things in literature. So I guess I have used all 3 components of focalisation, mostly using the internal one. Part 2- Wow that was a mouthful to say the least. I enjoyed every minute of it. Loved you little rants there. I will admit, when it comes to books, I read them purely for escapism. As long as I am entertained, I don't need anything deep. Oh, and the stories have to have happy endings or at least leave me satisfied since reality is full hard times. FYI, I love The Last Unicorn too. Did you ever read the short story Two Hearts, which acts as a successor to The Last Unicorn, CCC? Very bittersweet, but I still enjoyed it. It was published in a magazine though and I was fortunate enough to read that magazine. As for my own stuff, as I mentioned already the perspective changes, but there have been times when the Narrator has been non-diegetic. Perfect examples would be when I first start off my stories and I initially describe the settings. Part 3- Reading is one of my fav ways to spend my time. Just look at my own library whether its manga or a hardcover. But I will admit I am hugely biased towards easier reads. Reading comprehension was never my strong point in English class. I remember in Freshman Composition (my first English class in college) when I basically had to describe the Wife of Bath's tale from a Psychological Point of View and had to read up on some Freud stuff. Got a bad headache from all that research because it was so hard to understand half of Freud's words, yeesh! Anyway, while 98% of the books I own is romance, there are a few classics. I know it's glorified fanfiction, but I just love Dante's Inferno (Pergatorio was good, but man was Paradisio so preachy). I also plan on rereading a book I hadn't read since high school, Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice. I actually read that book completely on my own time in HS because I heard about it on a kid's show no less. I doubt you've heard of this show, CCC, but on one channel that featured my country's famous Sesame Street, there at one point was a show that wanted to introduce Classical Literature to children. Show was called Wishbone. Wishbone is the main char and is a dog lol. Each episode features a book and Pride and Prejudice was one of them. But yes I also love reading because it's fun to imagine these worlds. I use to struggle reading so much so I tried creating my own stories to enjoy. They started out as 'picture stories', but my desire to read my own stuff really helped not only my writing, but my reading too. Overall, great video CCC. You always make your videos fun and fundamental. Keep up the good work.

Everyone else here is all about the literature and stuff and I’m just like “cute cartoon bird say big words me likey”

Fan. Flippin' TASTIC mah d00d~! X'3 LOVED this!

Cool vid! really entertaining, even if I end up feeling like i'm too small-brained for stuff like this :s

I don't know what to do with this observation or where this fits into the conversation, but I noticed that a lot of games (particularly with a narrative focus) try and have a book or film style narrator, even tho games are kinda unique in that they are one of the few mediums we're the audience are the narrator

It took "the years of rice and salt" to wrap my head around polyphony. Was kinda beaten over the head with the concept.

At first the definition of focalisation confused me but as the video goes on and the more examples you shown the more I get it

can you make a video about the last templar

I enjoyed that presentation of yours. You've got a nice blend of what appears to be imaginative desires, self-awareness, and down-to-earth-iness(that's not a word, is it?). The only thing that irked me about the video was that slide projection was tilted throughout the whole thing. But that's just a me problem. I apologize for even bringing it up.

Hey Cloudcuckoocountry!! Missed ya, buddy!

Would you ever be open to reading someone's short stories or baby novel to be set ups? I know you're probably hella busy doing all this amazing work so probably no but hell doesn't hurt to ask! Also you do amazing work!!! Keep up the videos and I will definitely keep watching.

only nick pick with reading some old books is ( kyle says ) i understand why plus it's easier to read to others but a ( kyle: blah blah ) is also simple. in my opinion when it comes to writing for me.

This guy gives me strong "Cyrus" from Octopath Traveler vibes.

whats the distinction between intra/extra diagesis and tense? are all intra diagetic stories in present tense and all extra diagetic ones in past tense and vice versa?

gooood shiiiiit

Hey, I miss you.

I would think an example of an intra-heterodiegetic narrator is Jazz by Toni Morrison. The book is narrated by the physical book itself, not any of the characters within it. So the narrator IS the book... "within" the story, but not a character INSIDE the story. I think that's makes sense?

is it bad i want to see you review YIIK?

Me who doesn't even write: Yes, exactly, finally someone said it! Hello fellow birb.

And we never saw him again

Truly a great video from front to back. I would absoloutly agree that lack of creativity in the form of narrators and narration in general really kills my motivation to read most books nowadays. Creative narration will make a boring story great and unimaginative narration will make a great story boring. I was developing this concept in my head as i was finishing out this video. Imagine a 4 narrator story of 2 humans and an angel and a devil who are respectivly their guardian spirits. Our humans narrate from their limited perspective in present tense in the form of incomplete thoughts and dialogue because thats how humans think in real time. Our guardians present their narration to fill the holes in these incomplete thoughts in past tense as the whole story being told after the fact. While all of our characters are diagetic and relevant to the story the angel and demon narrators are presented as a single omnicient non-diagetic narrator. They are only revealed to be separate limited narrators by the end of the story and this is lead up to with small hints such as the "non-diagetic omniscient narrator" only presenting one perspective at a time and both the angel and demon and the "narrator" never speaking to anyone within the story dispite the fact that those two are central to the story. Its the kind of twist that would make me backtrack to understand the narration in its new context. We dont even have a story yet but just with narrative creativity we have created a mystery to solve within the narration itself. Once again i really appreciate this breakdown and perspective on narration Cloud. Top notch work and do please keep it coming.

the greatest literary mind in the furry fandom was feelin' some serious oats on this one lmao hell yeah

In terms of narrators what would you say "House of Leaves" is?

I started playing AI Dungeon and I would feel like a writer if I had a bigger vocabulary.

My brain hurts. That's either the funny bump I got when I stared at the microwave or my brain getting bigger thanks to all the knowledge. I'm worried that I may be the dumbest person in this comment section.

Wait are you the same bird who was in silver quills video among others

Cute borb

After watching the entire video I am not convinced this term has any reason to exist. "The word Perspective is too broad, so lets create a bunch of words no one understands - SURELY THAT SHALL CLARIFY THINGS!"

if you want more convincing on the use of the 'metadiagetic' definition, you should read 'poorly planned comics' (not comics that are poorly planned, its a webcomic named poorly planned comics).

Why did you take down your Ender's Game video?

dunno, narration and the types of it are backseat to me to events and chemistry of characters. i suppose the wit of descriptors and interesting execution of the scenes are what i enjoyed the most of the stories i've read. usually its of the omniscient narration style in order to describe the consequences and aftermath, absent of the characters direct presence, of a dramatic event that gets me excited about the type of story telling opposed to more limited narration styles. omniscient gets great mileage out of the flexibility to jump to minor/supporting characters too.

I love the way the video is made but the horribly misaligned projector made me uncomfortable all throughout That's some grade A professor accuracy

i don't have a good comment for this but i feel like i should make one anyway so you get the engagement the video is pretty good though

33:40 Now thats just mean

Aspiring writers: Please read our stories. We want feedback. Cloud: No. Aspiring writers: Why? Cloud: On second thought--Here's a writer's decoder ring. Aspiring writers: This is just a blank piece of paper. Cloud: Turn it over. [...] [...] [...] ANALYSIS. Edit: Curse my impulse, made me not notice the mistake. Now give a moment to give into another by editing this comment.

lol this French dude aint got nothing on the SCP foundation

31:40 Acting in a less literal sense, acting in a more literary sense

Read infinite jest!