Writing the unreliable narrator

[Feo Takahari]

In retrospect, I'm not sure why I haven't asked about this already.

I've spent the past few months trying to resolve issues in a rough-drafted manuscript, and their chief cause is an unreliable viewpoint character, oblivious subtype. I'm trying to create the impression that she largely ignores the world around her, but the impression I've instead created is that the world around her is generic and poorly developed. How can I show that there's something she's missing? More broadly speaking, how does one convey to the reader that there are things the viewpoint character isn't conveying?

(To be clear, this specific character isn't the narrator, but I stick so closely to her viewpoint that she might as well be. I do have a few scenes from the perspective of a character who's more curious about what's going on, but he's also much less informed than she is.)

 

[Gurkhal]

One thing you could try is to make the UN (unreliable narrator) consider a person be like "this", but then that person does something which is entirley different from what UN would have expected. This could show that she does not really have a good idea about what kind of personalities people around her really have.

 

[CupofJoe]

? Show her very interested and informed about one topic... not something relevant to you story. It could show that she can be perceptive and observant but chooses not to... ?

 

[Chilari]

Use dialogue. Have a different character talk about something that interests them or is relevant to their story arc, but have your POV character shrug it off, say she doesn't care or hadn't noticed, and later have that information return in some way that shows her lack of observation and paying attention - have it come up but she doesn't notice, and this other character tells her that he's mentioned it before and how could she be so oblivious? And she's like "you didn't tell me this before" when he did.

But also use dialogue in other ways, have other characters just mention elements of the world as they normally would as part of conversation and leave your POV character to fixate on something else they said instead. That way you can show the world to the reader without the character "noticing" it.

 

[wordwalker]

Don't forget the power of scene breaks, and scene purposes in general. Use the general focus of what gets a scene to send a message over the UN's head to the reader: she may not notice, but this is the one event this morning that's part of the larger issue, because it's the one you mentioned. And the closer those Obvious Clues come to the edge of the scene, the clearer the statement is-- you may never want to end a scene exactly at "I'm sure it's nothing" without a buffer paragraph or two between the clue and the asterisks, for fear of being heavy-handed about your indirectness. But unless you insist on having three purely-characterization scenes for every clue scene, it works well.