What happens when the narrator isn’t human, isn’t alive, or doesn’t even exist in any traditional sense? Most stories are told by someone we recognize. A person. A voice with eyes, hands, memories, and a place in the world. But some of the most striking stories come from narrators who shouldn’t be able to speak at all. A black hole. A house. Death. Time itself. These unusual perspectives don’t just feel clever; they force us to see the story differently. And when done right, they unlock a kind of emotional depth that ordinary narrators can’t reach. Let’s talk about why narrating from the impossible works, and how writers can use it without losing the reader.

Why Unusual Narrators Grip Us

A strange narrator immediately signals that this story won’t play by normal rules. When the voice telling the story isn’t bound by human limitations, it can observe patterns instead of moments. It can see beginnings and endings at the same time. It can notice things characters are too close, too emotional, or too afraid to acknowledge. This distance creates power. Take Death in The Book Thief. Death isn’t cruel or dramatic. He’s tired. Observant. Almost gentle. Because he sees everyone eventually, the story gains an aching inevitability. Every small kindness feels heavier because we know how it ends. The narrator’s nature shapes the entire emotional tone. That’s the real magic.

Perspective Shapes Meaning

When you change who speaks, you change what matters. A human narrator might focus on motive, guilt, or desire. A non-human narrator might focus on repetition, decay, or time. A black hole, for example, wouldn’t care about individual drama. It would notice gravity. Pull. The way everything drifts inward eventually. This shift forces readers to think beyond character psychology. In Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, Death doesn’t just narrate events. He reframes them. War isn’t heroic or tragic. It’s busy. Efficient. Overcrowded. That perspective strips away sentimentality, leaving something raw underneath. Unusual narrators don’t explain feelings. They expose them by contrast.

Distance Creates Intimacy

It sounds backward, but emotional distance often creates deeper intimacy. Because these narrators aren’t directly involved, they notice quiet details humans overlook. The pause before a goodbye. The way a room changes after someone leaves. The weight of objects that outlive their owners. In Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, time itself bends. The narrator moves freely across centuries, making human anxieties feel small and fleeting. Yet that very smallness makes them more poignant. When a narrator exists outside normal time or space, the reader becomes aware of how brief and fragile human moments are. That awareness lingers.

The Risk of the Gimmick

Here’s the danger: unusual perspectives can collapse into gimmicks. If the narrator exists only to sound clever, readers will feel it. If the voice doesn’t have a consistent logic, tone, and limitation, the illusion breaks. Even a black hole needs rules.

Ask yourself:

● What does this narrator notice instinctively?

● What do they ignore?

● What can they never fully understand?

In Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics, cosmic entities narrate deeply human experiences, such as love and jealousy. The contrast works because the rules are clear. The voice stays consistent. The absurdity is intentional. Strangeness without structure is just noise.

Let the Perspective Do the Work

You don’t need to explain why the narrator exists. You need to let their perspective naturally shape the story. A black hole doesn’t need to announce itself. It can speak through compression. Through inevitability. Through the slow loss of light, memory, and escape. The best unusual narrators don’t constantly describe themselves. They reveal who they are by how they observe. Think of the house in The Haunting of Hill House. The building doesn’t narrate outright, but its presence feels sentient. Watching. Remembering. That quiet awareness is more unsettling than any direct voice.

Final Thought

Narrating from a black hole, or Death, or time itself, isn’t about being experimental for the sake of it. It’s about choosing the perspective that tells the truth of your story most clearly. Sometimes, a human voice is too close to see what’s really happening. And sometimes, it takes something vast, silent, and inescapable to remind us what stories have always been about in the first place: how small we are, and how much that smallness matters.