The unreliable narrator is a tool that many writers use in stories to add more depth and mystery behind a plot. The narrative technique revolves around a narrator who delivers readers the story from their own perspective, but the narrator is compromised, may not have the full picture, or may have a distorted view of reality that affects the plot of the story. The unreliable narrator is used often in many stories that revolve around psychology or a descent to madness. For today’s post, I’ll be teaching you how to write an unreliable narrator for your next story that will add to your plot, create depth in your story, and help enhance your writing.
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What is an Unreliable Narrator?
An unreliable narrator is a literary device that writers use to tell a story from the lens of a narrator who lacks some form of credibility. Their lack of credibility could stem from many reasons, such as a psychological condition, limited knowledge about a situation, intentionally deceiving the reader, bias, etc…
The idea of an unreliable narrator is a really engaging one for stories and can help provoke a lot of thoughts in the reader, as well as add a level of mystery to the story.
Types of Unreliable Narrators
There are many types of unreliable narrators that we find in literature, and there are many ways that they are expressed in stories. For one, you can have a narrator that lacks maturity or experience and may not understand everything happening around them. This narrator could be a younger person who views the world from their skewed lenses.
Another type of narrator that I find interesting is one that deliberately misleads the reader, which feels much more personal for a story structure. I actually employ this one in my own writing, and you can find evidence of that in Malware, Book 1 of The Fallen Age Saga.
An unreliable narrator can also be one that has a distorted view of the world due to mental illness or some type of psychological issue. They view the world through a lens that is distorted by their own mental condition. This is very observable in the movie A Beautiful Mind where the main character is schizophrenic. It’s actually one of the best examples of this sort of unreliable narrator.
You can also have a narrator that has incomplete information or has biases. They view the world through what they know or what they believe, which could distort information to the reader.
How to Create an Unreliable Narrator
Why is the Narrator Unreliable?
You should start by thinking about why the narrator in your story is going to be unreliable. What purpose does it serve the overall plot? What reason does the narrator have to be unreliable to the reader? Is the narrator lying or are they just not aware of what’s really going on? Is the narrator suffering from some psychological condition or do they have a distorted view of the world due to their own personal biases?
You want to think about the ultimate end-goal of your story and what the reason you have for including the unreliable narrator is in the first place. Additionally, you want to think about how the unreliable narrator will actually benefit your plot and how this narrator will propel the story forward.
Work on the Narrator’s Voice
After you’ve found your reason for having an unreliable narrator, you want to work on the narrator’s voice and how you will convey to the reader that the narrator is unreliable. You want to focus on the narrator’s tone, the way they speak, and how their speaking style affects the way the narration is conveyed to the reader.
You want to include realistic dialogue and you want to work on the tone of the way the narrator speaks to the reader. If the tone is erratic and inconsistent, that may hint at psychological instability. If the tone is confident and self-absorbed, then the narrator is likely lying to the reader. However, you want to be subtle so that the reader doesn’t immediately guess what’s happening in the story.
Contradictions and Shaky Facts
A narrator who is unreliable will not have a stable, consistent knowledge of the facts in the story. They will probably contradict themselves, fabricate lies or create subtle contradictions that may force you to double-take but not know why. You as the reader will feel that something is off, so when you write your unreliable narrator, put yourself in the position of your readers. If you were reading your book, or watching it as a movie in front of you, what’s something that will make you double-take?
Focus the Story Around the Narrator
Crafting an unreliable narrator that’s successful involves limiting the story from their perspective, even if it’s first or third person point of view. You want to showcase the story from their perspective, meaning that the narrator will not have all the information and will have their own interpretation of events. Adding multiple perspectives might ruin the intrigue of the unreliability of the narrator.
If you decide to go in third person, you might want to pick a close third-person point of view which is where it’s third person but only focused basically on the one character. This can be effective as well because you are just limiting the reader’s experience to one character and not tons of other voices or even the narrator’s voice.
Red Herrings Help!
A red herring is something that distracts the reader from the truth and makes them question the reality happening on the pages, and including red herrings is a great way to keep up the suspense in your story and keep your readers guessing about what’s happening and what will happen. I
Throwing slight clues and red herrings in your story that indicate that the narrator is unreliable can be really helpful for your readers. These are small details that somehow just don’t work for the reader and can indicate that there is something wrong with the narrator’s telling of the facts.
For example, Blide Stevens in Malware makes many references to the fact that he lies often to others, but in turn, he’s not telling us what he’s lying about nor is he explaining what the truth is. He makes references that he’s aware of things and that he’s had experience with other topics, but we don’t know how. That is until he starts to trickle information and you as the reader start to piece the story together.
Suspense and Tension Are Important
One of the best ways to deliver a story about an unreliable narrator is to have the story work with the ideas of suspense and tension. These things create uncertainty in the reader’s mind, as well as a sense of general unease. The reader must feel like something is wrong, but you don’t want the reader to identify the exact thing that’s wrong.
Creating suspense by throwing in foreshadowing, as well as the eventual reveal of the facts throughout the story can help to build tension in the story. You want to work with suspense a lot in these types of stories, and you can check out this post to learn more about suspense and how to include it in your books.
Writing Techniques for the Unreliable Narrator
Stream of Consciousness
The idea of a stream of consciousness is something that I use a lot with Blide in Malware where you basically show the narrator’s thoughts and feelings as the events happen. The stream of consciousness can change suddenly from certain topics and jump around details that may make the reader question what the reality of the situation is.
A stream of consciousness narrative can provide a deep insight into the narrator’s mind. This technique involves writing the narrator’s thoughts and feelings as they occur, often in a fragmented and disjointed manner. It can highlight their mental state and create a sense of immediacy.
Flashbacks
Flashbacks are another technique I like to use with my narrators and they can add a lot of complexity to a story. The narrator may not reveal information to the reader directly but sort of convey it in a flashback-like sense. The unreliable narrator might present events that are not in order either or somehow mix their memories with the present.
You don’t want to over-do this point, as your readers may be very confused, but you want to sort of have your readers question what’s going on for some parts of the story.
Internal Conflicts
Internal conflict is a big part of developing any memorable character, but having internal conflicts is a very important piece of the unreliable narrator puzzle. You want to show the narrator’s fears, their insecurities, and their problems that they may have with their own minds.
Joel from Soldat, Book 2 of my series, has a lot of internal conflict. He’s suffering from PTSD but he also needs to survive and he often snaps into moments of insane rage, thinking about nothing more than pulling a trigger and not stopping to feel anything. General Azurai from the overall series has a lot of problems with his clouded memory, which means that he will not even know what reality is to himself, leading to you as the reader also getting a warped idea of what the truth behind everything is. There’s a lot of internal conflict in my stories and you see that displayed frequently.
Things to Avoid
Having an unreliable narrator can be really fun to write about, but what I think some writers accidentally get into is overdoing it and creating so much confusion that the readers eventually lose sight of the story. You want to balance the unreliability with clarity and present lots of truth in the story so that the readers don’t feel like they are lost in the sea of the story.
You also don’t want to make your readers lose trust in the story. You don’t want to have your readers leave the book feeling like they were being just lied to the entire time. You want to make a reveal at the end at least that showcases what’s really going on.
You also want to avoid writing a shallow character who’s only trait is being unreliable. You want to showcase a personality and depth to the character so that the readers feel connected and understand this character better.
Examples of Unreliable Narrators
1. Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Holden Caulfield from one of my favorite books ever, The Catcher in the Rye, is a great example of a biased narrator and a young one. He is cynical and has a lot of issues processing his emotions, which causes us as readers to question if he is seeing things correctly.
2. Azurai Galardidiabroka in The Fallen Age Saga by Zainah Yousef
I’ve mentioned my books throughout this post, but Azurai Galardidiabroka is a perfect example of an unreliable narrator who doesn’t have all the facts. His memories aren’t totally clear and he seems to have a lot of confusion about what reality is from his own mind, with the fracturing state that he’s in affecting him throughout Book 1 and Book 2. I really think he presents a great example of a character that is lied to and also is unreliable because of this.
4. Ray Monroe in Fractured
Ray Monroe is a character from a movie called Fractured, but it’s honestly one of the best examples I can think of for an unreliable narrator. He sees the story from his lens, but we find out that reality and what we see do not coincide. There’s a consistent air of unease in the story the entire time, and it’s really a good movie. I enjoyed it, despite its flaws.
If you have any examples of unreliable narrators you enjoyed, drop a comment below! I’d love to add more books to my TBR list! Movies and video games are also valid!
The unreliable narrator is a great literary tool and if you do it right, it can change your story in a way that you may not have anticipated. You might also find yourself a bit surprised at how interesting your story may turn out. I really recommend the unreliable narrator structure for your stories, and I personally find it to be more fun when the narrator is a liar, is clueless, or has a distorted view that we learn about as we read more into the story.
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