authorial intrusion
Writer interrupts story
Authorial intrusion is a narrative technique in which a writer steps outside the story to address readers directly, offering commentary, opinions, or explanations that break the fictional frame.
Victorian novelists like Dickens and Thackeray used it freely, pausing their tales to moralize or confide in readers.
Modern fiction generally avoids it, favoring more seamless immersion, though some contemporary writers employ it for ironic or postmodern effect.
- narratorOne who tells events
- narrative voiceWho speaks the story
- first person narratorSpeaker who says "I"
- unreliable narratorStoryteller whose credibility wavers
- voiceSound from throat
aside · commentary · omniscient · address · reader · meta · breaking · fourth wall · breaking the fourth wall · Victorian · Victorian novel · digression · interruption · storytelling · telling · show don't tell · perspective · intervention
- literary devicesmetaphor, simile, hyperbole, personification, alliteration
- metafictionfourth wall break, self-reference, breaking the fourth wall, metanarrative, metafiction
- narrative voicefirst person, third person, POV, point of view, narrator
author, authorial, authors, authored, authoring, authorship, authority, authorities, authoritative