The unreliable narrator

[John Dean]

I recently taught a course on challenging the rules of writing, designed to encourage new ways of thinking for the writers in the class. During the research, I came across the idea of the unreliable narrator. I had never heard of it before but, reading further, I discovered that the unreliable narrative voice involves the use of a non-credible or untrustworthy narrator. It may be employed to give the audience a deliberate sense of disbelief in the story or a level of suspicion as to what information is meant to be true. This unreliability is often developed by the author to demonstrate that the narrator is psychologically unstable, is ignorant of certain facts of life or may be lying to the reader. I mention this because we have just had a story into the June Global Short Story Competition, whose narrator (they are usually first person) is as unreliable as they come and it makes for an engrossing read. You can enter at www.globalshortstories.net