The narrator who is aware of you

This whole lesson has been about who knows what in the relationship between narrator, characters, and audience.

While exploring third person point of view, we've progressively expanded the sphere of knowledge that the storyteller is willing or allowed to share with the audience, from the outward behaviour of one character to complete knowledge of everything and everyone in the story world.

There's one more way we can expand that bubble, which is to include awareness of the world outside of the story.

Here's a classic example from A Series of Unfortunate Events:

If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters.

The Bad Beginning

The snippet begins with the narrator appearing as a persona (who may or may not be 'the author') addressing the audience to warn them about the story.
This is not only omniscient knowledge of the characters and story to come, it also reflects knowledge of the audience and awareness that a tale is being told.
Notice how the narrator links their commentary to the characters, which is how they integrate it with the story.

Do these examples follow the same rules?

The great mystery with supervillains in stories is all the cooperation their plans must require. Not just from the henchmen, who are presumably amply reimbursed for their time and were always mercenary types looking for a quick win and a greater bully under whose iron wing they could shelter, but also all the ancillary helpers that are required for any large operation. The cleaners, caterers, internet providers, bookkeepers. You might wonder how they get roped into some madman's plan to take over the world. That's what Adjouembe Sana sometimes asked himself.

Let's back up. Before Casey was in the water, before the shark was on the prowl in this part of the ocean, there had been a steady warming of the waters which had driven seals and dolphins further up the coast, and further inland in search of food. This is what brought the shark to the beach. Sharks don't hunt humans, you know. You are not their idea of a good meal, and if one bites you, you can take comfort in the fact that 80% odds it will spit you and/or your leg back out. Obviously, for Casey, in this moment, a shark attack is nothing but terror. But, you know, it's good to think big picture here, too.

Write a snippet in which the narrator addresses the audience about some aspect of the story, and then make a link to the characters.

We began our lesson talking about the ancient storytelling form of the 'tale'.

For thousands of years, stories were literally told by a teller to an audience, who could refer to them directly or even engage them in the process of storytelling.

The 'completely hidden' storyteller is a relatively modern development, over the last few hundred years, which might have something to do with the invention of new types of media (including books) and increasing realism and naturalism in narrative and dramatic art.

So this idea of 'breaking the fourth wall' and addressing the audience directly is historically not unusual.

That's as far as we can take third person point of view!

We've gone from limited objective knowledge to total meta-fictional knowledge in just a few easy steps.

But this was third person. What about first and second?

Now that you know so much about third, these other two are simple to explain.

Point of view

The narrator who is aware of you