External focalization
Narratology & storytellingThe narrative describes characters from outside, like a camera: gestures and words, never thoughts.
Example
"He set down the cup. Checked the time. Left without a word." (What he feels: yours to infer.)
In external focalization, the narrator forgoes interiority: it records gestures, dialogue, surfaces — never thoughts. The reader faces the characters as strangers in a café: everything must be deduced from the visible.
It's the regime of literary "behaviorism," perfected by Hammett and by Hemingway's stories: the dryness of the outside makes the inside all the more present for being withheld. Demanding, external focalization suits short texts, scenes of tension, and moments where the opacity of other people is precisely the subject.
Put this term to work
The writing studio novelists were missing
Outline, characters, places and objects, the links between them, mind map, scene board, export: everything lives in one place. Plus an AI that knows your story, whenever you want one.
Free to write and to export. No credit card asked.