Craft Understanding Unreliable Narrators with Andrea J. Johnson

We love unreliable narrators like Tyler Durden from Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club or Amy Dunne from Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, but we rarely talk about how such narrators are written and what makes those characters so memorable. Luckily, we can garner a lot about the power of this technique simply from the fact that its usage can be traced back to the earliest forms of Greek literature such as Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey and can be utilized regardless of genre.

So this workshop will answer the big questions about this approach to viewpoint: What’s the best way to incorporate an unreliable narrator, and what are the benefits/pitfalls of the technique? What purpose do such narrators serve in fiction? How do you make your unreliable narrator empathetic enough that readers stay until the end? And when it’s all said and done, how can writers reveal their unreliable narrator without angering the audience?