Writing Excuses Transcripts

Writing Excuses Season Three Episode 30: Unreliable Narrators

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2009/12/13/writing-excuses-season-3-episode-30-unreliable-narrators/

Key Points: Unreliable narrator, third person limited, depends on how wrong the character's perceptions are. Unreliable narrator, first-person, often just lies to the reader. Unreliable narrator can add a subtext, another layer of meaning that the reader deduces. Another use of unreliable narrator is to let us see the character's viewpoint more clearly, since we experience their flawed view of the world. Yet another use is as a plot device to hide a twist. Epistolary stories, told through letters and journals, often are unreliable because people hide things in their writing. You can also have epigraphs that are clearly mistaken. Using third person limited unreliable narrators who are competing can introduce tension and characterize because the reader sees both sides, even though the characters don't individually know enough. Some books have a character who misleads by paying attention to red herrings and discarding real clues as meaningless. Seeing the uncertainty -- experiencing the confusion of the unreliable narrator -- also builds sympathy. Just don't withhold too much, have good reasons for what you withhold and why.
( behind the curtain... )
[Brandon] I'm going to go ahead and give our writing prompt this time. I would like you to do... to have one event occur, and then have five different perspectives of that event which are... none of which are completely true. Just people's own views of what happened. They did this once in the X-Files, it was a wonderful episode. [Note: probably X-Files Jose Chung's "From Outer Space"] The movie Hero accomplished this, different narratives explaining the same event.
[Howard] There's an episode of CSI that did the same thing.
[Dan] Rashomon by Kurosawa.
[Brandon] Give this a try yourself. This has been Writing Excuses, you're out of excuses, now go write.
[Howard] Five times.
[Dan] You're out of five excuses.