My story involves a kind of plot-twist towards the end. The problem is that the one of the sources of the misdirection comes from a kind of "Story so far" chapter towards the beginning.
It sets up what all the characters know (or at least think they know) about the last few years of a journey they have been on, during which events have happened unbeknownst to (most of) the characters, and other things didn't happen the way the characters believe they did. But the chapter is a summary to explain all this to the reader.
The story itself starts three years into the journey.
The problem is this. I want the reader to have similar knowledge to the characters, so they will be surprised by the reveal.
But I can't have the narrator simply lie to the reader, or leave out vital information that would obviously appear in a "how we got here" summary without it being silly or feeling contrived.
(e.g. it would be like in a novelisation of The Sixth Sense, the author describing in detail Bruce Willis'
operation after he was shot and heavily implying that it was a success.
)
Answer
But I can't have the narrator simply lie to the reader
Sure you can. That's called an unreliable narrator.
Instead of having a generic narrator-to-reader chapter, your "The Story So Far" material can be delivered via some other medium, or two characters who aren't in your story otherwise. It can be a newspaper article, a series of emails, a radio broadcast, two people talking, a lecture, or anything else.
So have a history teacher talking to a class. Write the introduction to a thesis. Make it a religious sermon, or a mom talking to her child, telling the child The Story So Far.
Any of these narrators have the potential to be unreliable — to edit, to omit, to lack information, to embroider, to editorialize. Your reader gets just the information you want, and you haven't outright lied.
No comments:
Post a Comment