posted
It's called an "unreliable narrator," hoptoad, and it is very tricky to do well.
The main thing you have to do if you want the reader to know that they are reading the words of an unreliable narrator is give them clues about what is really going on, so they can see past the bias and lies.
I wouldn't recommend that kind of approach until you are very well established as a writer. Unreliable narrators are probably harder to get right than omniscient narrators, and those aren't easy.
posted
One good way to quickly establish that a narrator is unreliable is to show other moral weaknesses. It's also pretty realistic because people with few moral faults usually don't feel as much need to lie.
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
That's an interesting point, Survivor. Especially in light of what I consider a very good example of an unreliable narrator: Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody. That character drives me absolutely bonkers (to the point where I have refused to read the last few books in the series, even though I like Elizabeth Peters' writing in general).
Amelia Peabody isn't a liar per se, though, so the moral weakness approach you suggest doesn't quite apply to her. I think she's delusional. I suspect that Elizabeth Peters thinks her delusions are funny, but they don't make me laugh.
Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is that you are right, Survivor, about one kind of unreliable narrator (and that is probably the kind that hoptoad is actually talking about), but there are other kinds of unreliable narrators--people who have truth problems that don't relate to moral weakness as much as they relate to psychological weakness, perhaps.
I think it's an interesting topic and I hope we get some good discussion going on it.
posted
I think that the unreliable narrator is perhaps one of the most underused approaches to communicating the realities of life. The fact is that almost anyone telling any story in real life is unreliable in some way or another (although often not deliberately dishonest). Eyewitness reports of crimes almost always conflict, and people's accounts of events within relationships are even worse. Since your narrator is apparently a habitual liar, the easy way to demonstrate it is to have him caught in a lie very early on. A study I heard about not to long ago found that when they recorded a ten minute conversation, 60% of the people in the study lied at least once. The average was three lies in the ten minute period. You can plausibly have your narrator caught in a lie pretty early in the story on that basis, and then people don't have to connect the dots between other moral or psychological issues and lying.
Posts: 491 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
Just a thought -- if you really want to show the audience that this person is untrustworthy, have him clue the audience in that he lies frequently. Provide a situation where he has to lie to another character and make it seem as though it were nothing to him/her:
------- "Where were you yesterday afternoon?" Jenny asked.
Well, I wasn't about to tell her where I really was. "I was just home recovering from a bad cold." That should work. She wouldn't understand if I told her about me and Peggy...
-------
I dunno...something along those lines. Give a few opportunities for the character to flat-out lie to another character and then justify the lie to him/herself, and the audience should catch on pretty quickly that this narrator will be tough to trust.
posted
Another way to establish that he's untrustworthy: have him (obviously) lying in a situation where it really doesn't matter to him whether he tells a lie or the truth, or a situation in which it's over such a small thing that neither would have much effect or relevance anyway. It should tell a lot about the character if he lies even when it's not a necessary part of achieving his goals.
Posts: 1041 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
One thing that I think is very important with an unreliable narrator story is that, at some point, you have to tell the reader the truth.
Now, that's not to say the narrator has to tell the reader the truth. That would defeat the purpose of the unreliable narrator. You, as the writer, have to tell the truth, though. You don't have to come right out and say it, but you have to put the information there so the reader can figure it out. The narrator may not realize that the information is there, or that they just revealed something they didn't mean to, or whatever, but the reader has to know the truth. The unreliable narrator only works if the reader knows he's lying, or wrong, or whatever the case may be.
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