#(one fic that's just All Repression All The Time with shades of Liar (internal) and one scene that's. um.

[scribefindegil]

Some thoughts on unreliable narrators as I procrastinate on writing several tricky scenes with unreliable narrators:

Every narrator is unreliable. Just like there's no such thing as 'objectivity' in journalism or academia, there's no such thing as a truly reliable narrator. The narrator's viewpoint is limited, they're shaped by their culture and personality and experiences, they overlook things and make assumptions. It's all a matter of degree. But usually we talk about "unreliable narrators" when the gap between what the narrator says and what the reader/author believes to be true is prominent enough to be narratively significant.

Where is the gap?

Unreliable narrators are not all duplicitous. In fact, many are telling the truth as they understand it. But some are not! This is by no way a comprehensive taxonomy of narrators, and even within a single story there are likely to be shifts and overlaps, but here are some Types I find helpful to consider:

Oblivious The reader doesn't get crucial information because the narrator simply was not paying attention. Maybe they were missing context. Maybe they were bored. Maybe they were distracted by a hot girl (Gideon I love you). Alternatively, the reader gets clearly false information (especially about how other characters are thinking or feeling) that the narrator wholeheartedly believes to be true (Breq I love you).

Repressed You the reader can tell that what the narrator's telling you they think/feel and what they actually think/feel are not the same, but the narrator themself has no idea. For narrators that lack self-awareness and don't understand why they do the things they do or for narrators that are really good at not looking at things that make them uncomfortable.

Liar (internal) The "Sure, you keep telling yourself that, buddy" version, where the narrator is on some level aware that they're lying to themself but doubles down on it anyway. Tends to involve a lot of rationalizing or misdirection. It's very common for a character to have a realization about something important partway through a story (that The System is corrupt, that they're in love with their best friend, that their actions are actually more self-serving than altruistic, etc) that makes them switch between Repressed (passive internal conflict) and Liar (active internal conflict). Or, you know, they might have a realization and not immediately start lying to themself about it, but where's the fun in that?

Liar (external) Usually shows up in first-person stories or in-universe writing, since it requires the narrator to be aware that they have an audience and be attempting to intentionally mislead them. In this case, there is a deliberate disconnect between what the narrator's understanding of events and the account of it they're giving for the purpose of spin or deception.

Coerced This is where the gap comes from an external factor, usually magic or sci-fi nonsense that messes with a character's mind and changes their perception of themself and/or reality, (eg they can't talk/think about a certain subject, they've had their memories altered, etc). It's a different flavor than the other sorts of unreliability and can overlap with any of the others depending of how aware the character is of what's been done to them.

How Obvious Is The Gap?

Another thing to consider is at what point, and to what extent, a reader becomes aware that a narrator is unreliable. Is it clear from the beginning? Is it played as a reveal? Is is a slow dawning realization? Is it something that you could overlook on a first readthrough that only becomes obvious once you put the pieces together? All of these can be effective, but it's good to know going in. If you want the narrator's unreliable nature to be a reveal (that is, there's a point where the reader realizes that they're lying and that recontextualizes the whole story), you're going to approach it differently than if you want your readers to be screaming about the dramatic irony from the beginning. If your point is that the reader shouldn't actually know how much of what the narrator's telling them is true, that's going to look very different than a story about a narrator who has an on-page realization about one of the big things they've been lying to themself about and has to navigate the consequences.