The Unreliable Narrator

An unreliable narrator tells the story but can't be trusted entirely. They might lie, be delusional, biased, or simply wrong. Truth emerges from contradiction. Plath writes "If you expect it, my scream could scale the sky"—expressing rage but also unhinged. We don't trust the speaker's judgment, which makes the emotion more real.

Commit fully to the narrator's perspective. Don't wink at readers. Let them discover unreliability through details and contradiction. The narrator believes what they're saying. Readers catch the inconsistency. This technique lets you explore difficult emotions with complexity.

The reader's job is reading between lines.