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The terms ‘Narrator Bias’ and ‘Unreliable Narrator’ come up from time to time.  In general, they denote that a story is being told with a skewed point of view.  You get a sense that you aren’t seeing events as they really happened or there are aspects that are being left out.  Either the narrator didn’t have this information or they are purposely leaving things out that don’t fit their version.  I’m sure I’ve already got a few people ready to bring this issue into reality.

I’ve noticed that you can’t always tell if narrator bias is happening.  Not only the audience, but the author as well.  If you’re working with one perspective then you’re not going to have any outside information.  This is especially true for 1st-person POV, but can happen in 3rd-person as well.  One could even say it’s inevitable since you can’t write a story that shows everyone’s perspective at the same time.  That would lead to mind jumping every paragraph and it being difficult to keep track of who is showing you what.  This is why authors tend to choose a specific POV for a story/scene/chapter.

Now, you might be ready to argue that a POV character isn’t always the narrator.  You’re right, but the narrator bias falls on whoever is showing the events. If the narrator is simply doing exposition and describing the physical scene then the doubt would be aimed at whoever is speaking.  It is harder to believe in narrator bias here since it would be primarily through actions and dialogue.  One could shift the suspicion back to the formless/nameless narrator again.  This is what makes this rather confusing.

It doesn’t help that an author doesn’t have to intentionally add narrator bias.  By making deep and multidimensional characters, one can inadvertently get the audience to think they’re being lied to.  This happens a lot when you write a villain who is supposed to be sympathetic or make some kind of sense.  For example, the villain is trying to help humanity deal with limited resources by going on a murder spree instead of trying to create more resources.  A reader who thinks this is a good idea might think the heroes, who would be the main source of information, are skewing reality.  They’ll look for hints that this isn’t the real story, which can make for interesting conversations.

Now, say that you want to make a narrator come off as unreliable.  There are several tricks that you can use, which I’ll go over on Wednesday.  You need to garner some level of trust even if you also want some doubt.  This tactic works best if the audience isn’t sure that they’re being tricked.  Of course, this isn’t easy to pull off and you may need to do edits specifically to make sure you’re both hiding and revealing the truth.  It does help to decide on if the narrator is being honest or not too.  If the author isn’t sure on some level then the whole thing can fall apart.

So, what do you think of narrator bias?