r-artificial, the underlying cause of much
of the artistic weakness of the story which lays bare the souls of all
characters instead of one or two of the most significant. In his own
daily life the reader is accustomed to a one-sided presentation of the
social spectacle, and complete omniscience on the part of the
impersonal relator of a fiction has the taint of artificiality, or even
of bare exposition. And exposition, which implies a mathematically
complete presentation, is not fiction, which implies shading and
suppression, absolute or temporary.

Any suggestion of artificiality may be entirely avoided, and the
frequently necessary advantages of third person narration retained, by
assuming omniscience as to all the physical facts or events of the story
while rejecting omniscience as to the souls of the characters, except
the souls of one or a few. Thus the writer may escape the inherent
limitation of first person narration, that the story is told by a
character of definite powers and knowledge, and retain the chief
advantage of that mode of narration, the more or less single viewpoint,
corresponding with a reader's own outlook on life and its happenings.
This hybrid method of narration utilizes the virtues and rejects the
vices of the two strict types. By telling his story in the third person,
but from the viewpoint of one or two of the chief characters, an author
may assume the desirable omniscience as to objective facts and the
desirable limitation upon knowledge as to subjective motives. This is
not to say that the nature of a particular story may not call for strict
first or third person narration; it is merely a suggestion that the
virtue of each type may be utilized at once. Each story makes certain
demands, and the writer is not confined to two means of satisfying them.

A reader of any catholicity of taste can recall numerous examples of the
various modes of narration, and in future reading it will be directly
profitable for the writer to note the narrative device employed, and how
it has aided or hampered the development of the fiction.

More extreme devices have been, and may be employed, such as
Richardson's of telling a story in a series of letters. They are curious
rather than important.

In estimating the availability of a mode of narration the writer should
consider the matter of length. The adoption of the omniscient viewpoint
may carry the story unnecessarily beyond due limits, for the writer who