“Would I lie to you?”
Probably not. I’m a strong believer in telling the truth. If the day arises that I have to lie to save my life or my family I am more likely to be believed. Besides, if there’s one thing being a writer requires of you, it’s keeping a long fictional thread consistent. Just remembering precisely what a character knows or doesn’t has done or hasn’t, is quite demanding for my head. It’s easier if you don’t have to.
Mislead? That’s a different matter. That’s letting the person – or the reader in my case — deceive themselves. You want to look at the scruffy and badly dressed bloke, and the one in the smart suit and decide the latter is rich and successful, that’s on you.
A lot of fictional deceit – necessary wherever there is any kind of mystery – is based on letting the reader jump to the wrong conclusion about characters. That’s often as simple as the example above. I’ve just, however, listened to BLACK WIDOW (Christopher Brookmyre). It was a good thriller/murder mystery — but basically the ‘mislead’ comes down to a false POV. You are misled (deliberately) as to whose point of view the book starts from. To not spoil it too much you’re led assume that the pregnant character is the woman who is stressing about the possibility of being pregnant when you jump to another point of view set at an earlier time (this is just one of the misleads).
Without that ‘mislead’ there is really not much of mystery. The book begins with the guilty party in the dock… you just are mislead as to who is in the dock and why. Personally, as being distinct about POV is very important to me (and this POV is distinct — just misidentified.) it’s not something I had ever considered. How do you feel about deceiving your readers – and how best do you do it? The unreliable narrator? Hiding facts from them? Or letting them mislead themselves.
Mad Genius Club 
8 responses to “Misleading the reader”
I provide them with the facts, all of the facts, but a lot of worthless data along with the jems. It’s on the reader to figure out what is wheat and what is chaff.
In Dr Z., the PoV character is a bit of an arrogant ass, though a seemingly repentant one. He thinks he can learn anything, do anything, all by himself- or, more to the point, that there is *nobody else* to do them, so he’d better become a polymath on all the things. He has blind spots where he doesn’t consider things in much depth, dislikes (inefficiency, people, bureaucracy), and things he doesn’t know that he doesn’t know.
Single PoV allows you to show ignorance organically. Zolnikov doesn’t know that the hardware he is piloting is set in testing mode, thus the artificial time limit displayed. He’s not a mechanic kind of guy, so fixing his heat exchangers is not something he even considers- he’s just looking for a way out.
He doesn’t focus on people much (if at all), so the little interpersonal details like who is canoodling with who, or which guy is getting grabby and making unwanted advances, or who is coming down with a sudden case of mild panic attacks in combat due to PTSD, or even what the major (and blindingly obvious to normal people) drives and desires of his fellow humans are.
There are a *lot* of little lies in Dr Z. Mostly because the author finds it fun.
For third person, it can be more about selective focus. If you draw reader attention over here, and elide a few critical details over there, poof! Instant surprise attack. Or, foreshadowing or something similar. In the other zombie story, the reader doesn’t know about the cult until it strikes, even though the *characters* obviously are aware that it exists, that existence isn’t in the forefront of their minds. The humans aren’t aware of the mechanics of their allies’ existence, either. The reader, the humans, and the characters are ignorant of their own history by and large, and the significance of certain details are obscured by said ignorance.
Myths, gossip, and misunderstandings are other ways to lead the reader astray with careful deliberation. Or with wild abandon, whichever floats your stone canoe. Yes, I am totally using stone canoes in a story now that the thought is in my head.
Anyway. Stories are sophisticated lies that entertain. At least ideally. A good lie makes the story better, and entertains the reader. You don’t want everything to be perfectly boring all the time, do you? Unless, of course, you’re setting the reader up for a punch that is. Stories have a certain rhythm to them, a pace that is familiar and interesting to the reader. You can, indeed, use pacing to lie. Just like you can use direct language to lie.
Subverting expectations, twisting a familiar theme, these things are just the spanners and hammers of the author tool box. Everybody does it, so don’t feel bad when you lie to the reader. Take your peer pressure and love it!
On the whole I find unreliable narrators unpleasant as long as they are a puzzle. When I want a puzzle, I do a puzzle. That’s not the experience I read for.
Agatha Christie did it best with “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.”
You can only read this novel once because the second time around, it’s a very different novel.
Every novel changes when its mysteries become dramatic irony. But some change more than others.
She wrote two other novels that can only be read once, “Endless Night” and “And Then There Were None.”
Interestingly, if you’ve seen most of the film versions of “And Then There Were None,” you won’t know the novel! Agatha seriously retconned the two most villainous characters into our heroes. Most films use the stage play. One combines the stage play with the novel. Only two films (neither in English) actually follow the plot of the novel.
I tend to use red herrings and false clues salted in with the real foreshadowing. Unreliable narrator is too hard for me to write, because I just am not yet good enough to get my brain to work that way.
There’s a joke that goes ‘Well, obviously I seem to have a lot of challenges with consistency, which must mean that I am part way to accomplishing an unreliable narrator.’
Which feels to me like if I believed this, I would be conflating two distinctly different things.
Currently, I identify as having a skill issue with writing. Which may mean that I am blowing some rust off, or am actually in the middle of improving.