Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Stephen King’s Secret Window, Secret Garden, and Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island are excellent examples of third-person unreliable narration. But it’s also possible to do it in the third person. That way it’s the character lying to the reader, not the author (or so goes the logic). Unreliable first-person narrators are most common. This will help to anchor your reader’s experience, allowing them to tell the difference between your unreliable narrator’s perspective and what’s really going on. If your book has multiple POV characters, they can serve the same function. This could be as simple as having another character fill in the blanks of your unreliable narrator’s memory lapses if they’ve been impaired by alcohol, or having a sane character challenge the perspective of your delusional narrator if they’re suffering from psychosis. Try to give the reader a way to access the real truth of your story. For example, if your narrator is suffering from paranoid delusions, the consequences of which you’re going to reveal at the very end in a devastating plot twist, leave some breadcrumbs earlier on in the book so that, when they think back to how the narrator has been telling the story, they can see that it was obvious they were unreliable all along. Or their perspective could be skewed by immaturity or naivety. Maybe they’re lying in order to get away with murder. Perhaps they’re suffering from delusions, hallucinations, or some other psychosis. Maybe their memory is impaired by alcohol. There should be a compelling reason why the narrator is unreliable.
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So how do we make sure it’s the former and not the latter? Well, here are some tips on how to pull it off: But when it’s done badly, it can leave the reader feeling betrayed and short-changed by what seems like a cheap trick. When it’s done well, it can be used to create plot twists, add depth to a character, or deliver a powerful emotional punch. In truth, authors lie to their readers all the time. And yet it’s a rule that’s been broken many times, to great effect – The Catcher in the Rye, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Girl on the Train, Atonement, Shutter Island.
If you lie or omit information, your reader could be forgiven for wondering what’s the point in reading when they can’t tell what’s ‘real’ and what’s not. It’s a rule, of course, because to break it is to break a basic contract of trust between you and your reader: that you’ll tell them the truth. One literary rule that was made to be broken is reliable narration. But if you want to push the boundaries, if you want your writing to be truly memorable, or if your vision for your story simply demands it, know that it’s possible to do things differently. Sure, you can write great stories while sticking to all the established conventions. The second is to know when – and how – to break them. The first rule of good writing is to know the rules.
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