When you cannot trust what you are being told

[John Dean]

I am currently teaching a creative writing course, part of which focuses on the unreliable narrator, a character who tells a story that the reader cannot take at face value.

The course preparation work reminded me that it can be a good technique to use and one I employed when writing The Vixen’s Scream, one of the DCI Jack Harris crime novels, in which the reader is privy to the thoughts of a serial killer but soon comes to doubt what they are being told.

The technique has been used for many centuries. Sometimes, the narrator is unreliable by the nature of the character, such terrible people that they cannot tell their stories objectively and resort instead to lies and deceit.

There is another type of unreliable narrator. This narrator is unreliable due to having incomplete or incorrect information, although initially neither the narrator nor the reader is aware of this.

Or the unreliable narrator may simply be deluded, suffering perhaps from an illness which clouds judgement (dementia is becoming a strong theme for many writers and one I used in one of the DCI Blizzard novels, The Secrets Man).

All are terrific techniques but there are dangers. For a start, readers do not always understand that a narrator is unreliable. To counter that, the unreliability of the narrator can be gradually revealed.

It is important to plant clues along the way. How can a writer do this? There are a number of ways, including showing the reactions of other characters, thereby telling the reader that all is not as it seems.

The Vixen’s Scream is available in ebook, paperback and audio book at

https://www.amazon.co.uk/VIXENS-SCREAM-captivating-featuring-Detect...