How Fiction Works Writing Meme - day three

[meridian_rose]

3 - How reliable are your narrators? Can we believe everything they say? Or are they unreliable, their narration shaded by their feelings? Do your readers usually have more information than the character narrating? Do you use an external narrator, who is not part of the story? Are they reliable? Do you prefer reading a reliable or unreliable narrator?

Since I mostly write third person POV, this doesn't often come up, I don't think. First person POV – no person is completely reliable. We all have our biases, our own perceptions. Few people have perfect recall. My narrators are usually telling the truth, I believe, or at least the truth as they are aware of it. The truth as they remember it. Occasionally they might gloss over a detail that they find irrelevant or embarrassing or damning, but I don't think they invent things.

I think it's hard to write an unreliable narrator well. It's a tightrope of making sure the reader knows the narrator is fictionalising their account, while making the story flow and be mostly believable. I suppose I prefer to put my trust in reliable narrators, as far as any character is reliable.

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I'll make an index post when I've completed the meme with links to all my answers; they will all be tagged #how fiction works meme. You can find the full set of questions at pristineungift's entry:here

Comments

[ivanolix.livejournal.com]

Since I mostly write third person POV, this doesn't often come up, I don't think

Do you write third-person-limited, though, or third-person-omniscient? I write the former, so unreliable narrators come up...basically all the time. Not when it comes to outright lying, but their interpretations of themselves and others are always from their POV, not mine.

[meridian_rose]

It depends, I think. Sometimes limited, sometimes omniscient. If I'm writing limited, then you're right; it's about how that character sees and interprets things, which might be very different to how other characters are viewing the same events.

[hrhrionastar.livejournal.com]

no person is completely reliable. We all have our biases, our own perceptions. I mostly write first person or third person limited, so this comes up a lot. I tend to have trouble with third person omniscient for this very reason, I think - I, the author, am not completely reliable, so how can I be sure I'm ever presenting the story or the characters in an unbiased way?

I think there are ways to get across when a viewpoint character is being accurate and when they're lying to themselves, or just mistaken, though.

The only book that comes to mind where the narrator is supposed to be unreliable is The Catcher in the Rye, which most people either love or hate (I hated it, myself, so maybe I don't like unreliable narrators).

[meridian_rose]

Oh, that book D: A friend was reading a lot of classical/rebellious literature and lent me On The Road, The Catcher in the Rye and something else that I can't recall. I couldn't understand why Catcher was a classic - I wondered if had to do with me not being American and therefore not really understanding the culture and his dissatisfaction with it. Perhaps I didn't get that the narrator is unreliable and I'm not supposed to try and identity with him...I just remember thinking that he was bit of a whiny brat :P

[hrhrionastar.livejournal.com]

100% agreed :D

I had to read Catcher for school, and I've never struggled with an essay more than the one we had to write for it. Holden is like Hamlet, only without any redeeming features like being able to rhyme in interesting ways and having actual plot.

I think a lot of people do identify with Holden, though, even though I never did. Something about how no one understands, life is pointless, etc...idk.

I also read On the Road, which I didn't like either, mostly because it seemed sexist.

I don't know what to consider classic American literature - probably because I tend to like genre stuff, like fantasy and sci-fi, better anyway ;)

[pristineungift.livejournal.com]

I despised Catcher, but I think it does speak to people more dissatisfied with life. I just found it to be a bunch of whining with an obvious slant towards nilism.

I'll post my answer to this question in a minute so I won't say more here, but I will say that I enjoy unreliable narrators.

[hrhrionastar.livejournal.com]

I just found it to be a bunch of whining with an obvious slant towards nilism. Likewise ;)

I see all narrators as somewhat unreliable, but, like so many stylistic questions about writing, I think my answer is, if the writing is good enough there's not much I won't learn to like...

[brontefanatic.livejournal.com]

A nineteenth century novel with an unreliable narrator is Charlotte Bronte's "Villette". I hated this book the first time I read it. Then, upon two re-reads, it became a favorite of mine.

"Jane Eyre" is also told in the first person, but Bronte clearly meant the reader to accept Jane's narration as reliable, whereas she intentionally does the opposite in "Villette", turning the very conventions she established in "Jane Eyre" on their head.

This was a risky choice by a female author in the 1840's, and it didn't go over very well with her public who wanted another JE - like love story.

It's rather a hard, bleak novel, but IMO well worth reading.

And then there's "Lolita" by Nabokov - A story told by one of the most despicable, yet pathetic, unreliable narrators of all time - Humbert Humbert.

"Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain - another narrator of questionable reliability.

I'm rambling now - this topic is very interesting.

[meridian_rose]

It's been a long time since I read Huckleberry Finn. I suppose I'd see the novel very differently now :D