The Unreliable Narrator: How to Lose Readers Fast

Have you ever found yourself reading a piece of fiction only to suddenly decide that you don’t want to bother listening to the narrator. It can happen because the writing is so terrible that you can’t bear to sit through it (learn to use a decent style and writing software, pal). Most of the time, though, it happens because the narrator manages to lose your trust at some point in the story.

Upon reading to some narrator’s work, when the contents tends to be so boring, you found yourself feeling sleepy as time goes by. Sometimes, you are reading but it won’t get right to your mind just like reading without understanding it. And since the writing is no interesting you feel like you don’t understand it at all, not even a single word.

But that’s in the case of reading for your own. What if you are inside a classroom and your teacher reads a certain piece from a narrator and most of you don’t feel to like it? Five to ten minutes while your teacher is reading the text in front of the whole class, the outcome will be all students tend to fall asleep.

That’s because the text is not really interesting and also the writing style is not of high quality. But if the situation was reverse and you were assigned to write one, how are you going to do it?

What’s your way of writing? is it just because you just have to write one and once you have reach the desired word count, then you are done with the writing task? Notice how unreliable narrators could write such text and compare it to your writing.

An unreliable narrator, simply put, is one that you can’t depend on. When a piece fiction is written using the voice of somebody you can’t put any faith on, anything you read from the point that they lose your interest will end up either ignored, doubted or flat out ridiculed in your mind.

What Can a Narrator to Do to End Up in this Boat?

1. Speak offensively. When you read any piece of writing where you vehemently disagree with the main point of view being pushed, you probably won’t put it down. You’d throw it to a wall and stomp on it.

2. Show clear, unfounded bias. If the narrator is biased without convincing reason, it’s difficult to proceed (since you know what you’re reading is blatantly false).

3. Tell lies. If an author pulls facts out of thin air for the sake of convenience or claims known false information as real, then it’s a grave violation of a reader’s trust – one that will likely be paid by not paying the work any further attention.

While fiction is the domain of the imagination, readers should be able to identify with your words. If your narration demonstrates any of the above traits, the only thing they will end up taking away with is a pretty nasty feeling in their gut. Last I head, nobody likes that.

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Category: Writing
Keywords: fiction, narrator, unreliable narrator

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