Writing: The Unreliable Narrator

In a way, everyone is an unreliable narrator - a group of friends could be sat at the same dinner party, but if you were to script that same scene from different perspectives, there's a good chance no one remembers it the same way. Often our feelings, relationships, memories and experiences can influence how we feel or reaction in a situation and this is the same with writing fiction.

Usually, a narrator's job is to give the reader/viewer the story from beginning to end and we are lead to believe this character's perspective is impartial. However, an unreliable narrator's role is to be either deliberately deceptive or unintentionally misguided, forcing the reader to question their credibility as a storyteller.. This is also a great tool for writers, because it keeps the mystery and suspense going through the eyes of a most likely flawed and untrustworthy storyteller.

The use of the unreliable narrator is seen mainly in first-person fiction, but we are usually limited to the unreliable character or characters' perspectives. William Riggan, a professor of literature from the University of Oklahoma, identified five “types” of unreliable narrators that are most common: The Madman, The Naif, The Liar, The Picaro and The Clown. Sometimes these character embrace more than one archetype, but we will be delving into these archetypes with some references to draw inspiration from.

Picaro. The picaro is a character who has a habit of bragging or exaggerating. One example that comes to mind are both the protagonists from Quinn Shephard's psychological drama Blame (2017), where both heroines take on a picaro role when drama teacher’s taboo relationship with an unstable student strikes a nerve in her jealous classmate, this sparks a vengeful chain of events within their suburban high school that draws parallels to ‘The Crucible’.

Whereas one character gives a rather sweet demeanour and the other has a brazen extraversion, both young women are exaggerating traits that are actually hiding much deeper and darker secrets. Here we see that the Picaro personas in both characters are masks to the outside world, only towards the end do the real Abigail and Melissa start to reveal themselves.

Madman. The madman is unreliable because they are mentally detached from reality. Now this character's detachment from reality can stem through mental health, traumatic stress or substance abuse which alters their ability to tell an accurate depiction of what is or has happened.

Shutter Island uses this method through Leonardo DiCaprio's Deputy U.S. Marshal Edward "Teddy" Daniels, who gives into the madman trope as an alternative reality is crafted around him to deal with unresolved trauma - yet he finds it fair too easy to live in fiction than face reality. Throughout this story, both he and the audience are lead to believe that the world being presented as fact, but Teddy's spiralling mental health and the strange visuals soon imply there's more at play.

While writing this, I realised Paula Hawkins' debut novel Girl on the Train wrote all three of her narrators as unreliable. Rachel as the Madwoman (whose alcoholism causes her to suppress and doubt her own memories), Anna as the Picaro (who struggles to commit to domestic bliss, adjusting to her role as the wife/mother and no longer the mistress) and Megan as the Liar (a character who by her own description is the mistress of reinvention, constantly changing the persona she presents to the world rather than face past traumas).

Having more than one unreliable narrator can actually make your novel/script more compelling, because you're letting your audience see mulitiple characters not only lying or being mislead throughout the plot, but they are misleading themselves into believing a false narrative.

Naif. These characters' narrative abilities are impacted by inexperience or age. In V.C. Andrews' work, where the point-of-view is told from an adolescent or child, their emotional maturity and narrative reliability reflects their age. Her standalone novel My Sweet Audrina shows the titular character's naif narration manipulated into the Madwoman as she grows older and begins to doubt her own sanity.

Audrina is lead to believe that the traumatic memories she's had for years are of her dead older sister (and namesake) and suffers emotional abuse and gaslighting from her family and partner, their method of protecting her actually causing more harm. This gothic horror is a good example of how a character can be manipulated into believing a false narrative through innocence or the actions of those who are meant to protect the narrator.

Clown. This is usually a narrator who does not take narrations seriously and consciously plays with conventions, truth, and the reader's expectations. These characters often use humour and innuendos to deflect from vulnerabilities and insecurities.

Arabella (Michaela Coel) is a young Twitter-star-turned-novelist who seeks to rebuild her life after being raped while in the public eye. Meanwhile Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag has a string of meaningless flings and distances herself from her family in the aftermath of her best friend's death. Both of these characters hide behind the Clown trope, because they are deflecting from being their authentic selves. Both characters are dealing with trauma neither are ready to face and humour is a coping mechanism they rely heavily on until they are able to shed their armour and face the narrative they’ve been hiding from.

Liar. The liar is the most deliberate of all the unreliable narrators. The character fabricates stories, often to paint a better picture of themselves or achieve a desired outcome.

Gone Girl’s Amy Dunne is the definition of the liar narrator. As well as creating different versions of herself to suit the people she’s with or environment she’s in, she manipulates the narrative around her disappearance. In her thirst for revenge, she fabricates such a detailed and and believable story, it convinces the world she has been murdered by her cheating husband.

Not only is Amy the unreliable narrator, she becomes the author of her own life. Through her manipulations, she reworks the narrative from murder victim to the damsel in distress - men are disposable to her and she concludes the narrative being the one with all the power. Amy Dunne is a character who rewrote the domestic thriller trope and the liar narrator.

When writing your own unreliable narrator, you must know the character's truth - what they really want and who they are in their own head - then fabricate a complete other version. Whether it's little lies or they're the villain of the piece, put them in situations where they have to reinvent themselves with different characters and use that to their advantage.

Or if your unreliable narrator is being mislead or manipulated into believing a false narrative, why is that? While you don't need to have every character's perspective on screen or page, you need to understand those perspectives to portray the story through an unreliable lens.

And remember, not all unreliable narrators have to be victims of circumstances or an Evil Amy. Sometimes your character is simply mislead and this lack of information influences their perspective. As novelist Dan Brown explains in his Masterclass:

"There are varying degrees of unreliability, which can create interesting, multidimensional characters. Even a morally good soul like Harry Potter occasionally gives the reader misinformation simply because it’s what he believes. In Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry spends most of the book running from an escaped prisoner he thinks killed in parents only to find out it was all a lie. Even if your main character is well-intentioned, give them unreliable moments to make them slightly flawed—and thus, more believable."

Readers and viewers are drawn to unreliable narrators because they are characters with clear human flaws and not unrealistic in their perfection. Through these characters, writers can explore dark and complex themes through a lens that keeps your audience engaged and emotionally invested.

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