Narrative Techniques In The Lovely Bones

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to look down from heaven after you were murdered, and see the people who loved you try and figure out your murder? The Lovely Bones, written by Alice Sebold, pulls readers in with its vivacious storyline to find out who killed the main character. The story takes place in Norristown, Pennsylvania, and it follows a teenage girl, named Susie Salmon, who watches from her heaven, as her family struggles to find out her killer. In conclusion, Alice Sebold uses many different writing technique that make you feel like you’re part of the story. Peter Jackson, the director of The Lovely Bones, just as well makes you feel like you part of the story, by using certain filming techniques to add to the overall mysterious

The narrative voice that Alice Sebold uses in the book helps set the mood because it compels the reader to make them feel like they’re part of the story. We see Alice Sebold use narrative voice on the first page when Susie says “I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.” By using narrative voice, the readers can almost feel like they know Susie in a sense, and get the whole mood of the book already set up for them. Peter Jackson also uses several different camera angles to portray narrative voice. For example, in the movie Susie narrates pretty much the whole thing when the other characters aren’t talking. There are also many scenes where Susie is narrating what’s happening down on Earth. One scene in particular is when Susie is about to get killed. Peter Jackson uses a certain camera angle called panning to show her running in the cornfield trying to chase her piece of paper that’s blowing away in the wind. By using this camera angle, readers can get a sense of what she is running after, what’s in front of her, etc. Viewers can tell in this scene that something bad is about to happen. The narrative voice is super cool and adds a certain mood to the movie, just like non-diegetic sound