Tyler Durden. Humbert Humbert. Alex the Droog. Literature is filled with unreliable narrators, from the villainous, like Patrick Bateman, to the dangerously naive, like Holden Caulfield or Huckleberry Finn.
In a post on the Killzone blog, PJ Parrish tries to talk writers out of using this writerly conceit. “The unreliable narrator is one of the trickiest literary devices to get right,” Parrish says. “Get it wrong, and your plot falls apart and the reader gets bored or frustrated. It can feel manipulative, confusing, and often pretentious. When it’s done right, though, it can be powerful.”
What is an unreliable narrator? It’s a character who is supposed to provide the reader an accurate account of a story, but who does not – or can not – do so. The narrator might be an outright liar, but there are other factors that can create this unreliability. The narrator in Fight Club struggles with insomnia so bad that he becomes irrational. John Nash (A Beautiful Mind) is schizophrenic and Leonard Shelby (Memento) has amnesia. Children are classically unreliable because they lack experience and insight.
If she hasn’t scared you off, Parrish suggests some factors to consider before you start writing a story with an unreliable narrator.
- Do you write well in first person? First person POV can be difficult to sustain even if your narrator is telling a straightforward tale, Parrish cautions. Be sure to master this skill before attempting an unreliable narrator.
- Are you relying on a gimmick? Do you have a reason for writing from the POV of a child or a ghost? Is the reason a weak plot?
- Do you have stamina? First person is hard to maintain (see above). Can you see it through to the end? Can you dole out information to the reader without using info dumps while simultaneously building in the trickery inherent in an unreliable narrator? You have to have solid control of your skills to prevent yourself from weaving back and forth between reliability and unreliability, Parrish says. You have to commit to staying in your narrator’s head.
- Will you reveal or conceal your narrator’s unreliability? Vonnegut tells us from the outset of Slaughterhouse Five that Billy Pilgrim’s story “mostly happened,” but the reveal in Fight Club happens near the end.
