I got this idea from reading the latest issue of Writer’s Digest, so fair warning!
Jane K. Cleland says unreliable narrators have been around since before Arabian Nights was written. The term itself is attributed to Wayne C. Booth, who used it in 1961’s The Rhetoric of Fiction. The unreliable narrator is one who cannot be trusted or believed, whether or not the reader realizes that fact until the end of the story.
There are five basic reasons for unreliability in a narrator:
- The Innocent, Unknowing, or Misunderstood: This category includes children, the developmentally disabled, or anyone who finds themselves in a strange culture. It should be fairly obvious why children, with their skewed views of reality, would make unreliable narrators. Ditto the disabled. They just don’t have the experience or the ability to understand everything that’s happening around them. If you’re raised in another culture, though, the same holds true. You’re missing part of what’s happening because you don’t understand the lingo, the idioms, and the context behind the actions.
- The Guilty: This category not only includes people who actually are guilty, but those who feel guilty, whether or not that feeling is accurate. They are going to try to hide things from the reader, either to cover up a crime or to hide the fact that they’re not living up to their own standards.
- The Emotionally Taxed or Mentally Ill: It’s pretty reasonable that a mentally ill person would make an unreliable narrator, with their off-kilter viewpoint. Someone who is emotionally taxed would, in the same way, view everything through the lens of their emotions.
- The Incapacitated: Drug addicts (no matter what sort of drug they abuse) make unreliable narrators because they share two characteristics: they can’t reliably assess risk and they blame others for their failings. Combine those traits, says Cleland, and you have the perfect unreliable narrator.
- The Paranormal: A supernatural character can appear to be human–or not. They may be a ghost or vampire, or they may be a non-human alien or mythological creature. In any case, they’ll have totally different cultural, emotional, and mental backgrounds than the reader, so they will ultimately be unreliable.
Using these five basic categories, you can come up with scores of situations where your narrator will be an unreliable one. And as Cleland, says, “… these are the deliciously twisty and complex stories readers crave.”