Readers have an experience when they read a good book. They slip into a trance-like state and become the narrator character in the story. They experience what the character experiences. They feel what the character feels. If the character doesn't know something, the reader doesn't know it either. And when the character is confronted with new knowledge, it is new to the reader as well.
A perfect demonstration of this power is in the movie "Sixth Sense". The story is told from the point of view of Dr. Malcolm Crowe (played by Bruce Willis). The movie opens with Malcolm getting shot by one of his more psychotic patients. It then shifts to a point some time later where Malcolme starts helping a new patient, a young boy named Cole Sear (played by Haley Joel Osment). The movie follows Malcolm and Cole as they try to sort out Cole's problem of seeing ghosts. Finally, towards the end, they realize that the ghosts have unfinished business and if Cole helps them resolve that, then the ghosts will go away.
It is at this point near the end of the moview that Malcolm realizes that he himself is one of the ghosts that had some unfinished business, that he had to say goodbye to his wife. Malcolm did not know he was a ghost until the end.
From a narrative perspective, this results in a congruency between the POV character and the audience. Malcolm thought he was a therapist tryign to help a kid, so did the audience. When Malcolm realized that he was a ghost, the shock of that realization was felt by Malcolm as much as it was felt by the audience.
In the case of "The Sixth Sense", it turns out that the narrative character, Malcolm, is an unreliable narrator to some extent. He didn't know he was a ghost, so he never mentioned that fact to the reader.
Had "The Sixth Sense" been told from the point of view of Cole, Cole knew immediately that Malcolm was one of the ghosts haunting him, and Cole as narrator would have conveyed this information to the audience as part of his story telling. At the end of the story, when Malcolm realized that he too was a ghost, it wouldn't have been a surprise to the audience.
The problem with some stories is that what the writer calls an "unreliable narrator" is really an "unreliable writer".
Imagine if "The Sixth Sense" had been told from Cole's point of view. Imagine that in telling his story from his point of view, that Cole "forgets" to mention to the audience that Malcolm is a ghost.
When Malcolm told the story from his point of view, Malcolm didn't know he was a ghost. So, he didn't mention it to the audience until he found out himself towards the end of the movie. If Cole tells his version of the story, he immediately knew that Malcolm was a ghost and would have told the audience this information.
It might be possible to make a great version of the story from Cole's poitn of view, but it would start by Cole saying that there's these ghosts following him around and one of them is a therapist named Malcolm. The story arc would not be about Malcolm's realization that he was a ghost. There would be no surprise for the audience at the end, because Cole told them at the beginning.
But imagine that the writer decided to tell the story of "The Sixth Sense" from Cole's point of view, but decided to withold from the audience what Cole knows: that Malcolm is a ghost. Sometime near the end of the story, Malcolm would realize he is a ghost, and Cole would say something like "Yeah, I knew all along".
The audience is following the story from Cole's point of view. They are in Cole's shoes. They're feeling everything Cole is feeling. They're thinking everything Cole is thinking. And then it turns out that they're really not. The connection between the audience and Cole is violently severed when the audience realizes that Cole knew something but didn't convey it to them.
The audience comes out of their trance-like state of living the story of Cole's life and is suddenly aware that they're watching a movie. The audience is feeling something that Cole is not. Cole knew Malcolm is a ghost. The audience is shocked that Malcolm is a ghost. This separation of feelings, this incongruency of emotion, disconnects the audience from the POV character, and a writer should be extremely wary of disconnecting their audience from the POV character.
Now, if Cole was in denial that what he was seeing was ghosts, and he tried to interact with all these visions as if they were somehow real flesh and blood people, then Cole would narrate the story about this flesh and blood therapist who is tryign to help him. And at the end, Cole would have to come to terms with the fact that Malcolm is a ghost and however Cole felt about that, the audience would be feeling similar things.
But for a writer to choose a character who knows something and that character is not in some form of self-denial about that something, and for that writer to write the story so that the character fails to mention this matter-of-fact information to the reader, can create a incongruency that separates the reader/audience from the story. The writer becomes unreliable, not the narrator.
Sometimes unreliable writing can work for a story. A famous example is the movie "The Sting". The story is told from the point of view of Johnny Hooker (played by Robert Redford). Johnny seeks out Henry Gondorff (played by Paul Newman) to pull a con or sting on a big time criminal, Doyle Lonnegan. The main arc of the story is Johnny and Henry setting up the con on Doyle.
In the last half of the movie, some feds show up and put pressure on Johnny to turn on Henry. And we watch Johnny squirm as he tries to protect his friend, and then finally surrenders and agrees to betray Henry. At the big finale of the movie, as Johnny and Henry are putting the con on Lonnegan, the feds bust in and arrest everyone. The feds have a crooked cop whisk Lonnegan away. Once the cop and Lonnegan are out of the room, the feds reveal themselves to be part of the con. Johnny and Henry knew them, and knew they were part of the sting. When Henry was squirming under interrogation, he was acting. It is revealed that the whole thing had been set up to get the dirty cop off of Johnny's back and use him to get Lonnegan as far away as possible.
The incongruency is that the audience was feeling scared for Johnny while the feds were interrogating him, but in reality, Johnny knew it was all part of the con.
So, why does this work in "The Sting"?
It's a combination of several factors. First of all, the subplot with the feds was not the main story arc. It was part of the con added to deal with the crooked cop. Secondly, the incongruency was revealed at the end of the movie, when the audience has to see credits rolling and get their coat and leave the theater. Being reminded that you're watching a movie just before credits roll isn't as damaging as being reminded you're watching a movie in the middle of the movie. Third, the feelings of incongruency between the audience and Johnny about the true nature of the feds was minor compared to the congruency that both felt excitement and relief that the whole sting had been successfully pulled off. And finally, the movie was called "The Sting", was about two conmen, was about things not being as they seem, about pulling the wool over someone's eyes, and this was one way to have the audience experience a little bit of what it is like to be conned, without completely disconnecting them from the point of view characters.
The writers were "unreliable" in the sense that the narrator Johnny knew the feds were in on the con, but withheld that information from the audience. But it worked for "The Sting" because it was, in some ways, expected. The audience wanted to experience the con on some level, while still remaining connected with the narrator.
As a writer, creating a story where the narrating character knows something but doesn't reveal that to the audience is flirting with disconnecting your audience from your story. It can become problematic.
Some general rules of thumb:
Don't create incongruency between the narrator and audience until after the climax. After the climax, during the denoument, you can reveal a twist and disconnect the audience from the narrator and the damage will be less because the audience got the payoff of the climax, and the denoument is just preparing them for the credits to roll. They're preparing to leave the story and go back to the real world anyway. They're getting their coats, looking for their purse, picking up their trash and getting ready to leave. Doing something that informs them that they're watching a movie or story won't be nearly as damaging as if you did it in the middle of the story.
Don't make the withheld information into a "false mystery" or "contrived suspense" for the reader. If the narrator knows the truth, but withholds the information for no good reason, it could be because the writer wants to create some "false mystery" for the reader. A true mystery is told from the point of view of a character who doesn't know who the killer is. Witholding information in order to sustain some "mystery" or "suspense" may indicate the story is either beign told from the wrong point of view, or the story itself doesn't have enough suspense to make it interesting.
Don't make the incongruency be a major component of the emotional connection of the story. The feds were a minor subplot in "The Sting". If the story had ended with Johnny revealing that he in fact had been working for Lonnegan from the beginning, it would be a massive incongruency between the audience and their experience of Johnny as narrator. An extreme example of this is the not uncommon curse ending of "It was all a dream". With this one line, everything the reader experienced up to that point is destroyed. That the "feds" were really part of the bigger Sting is more palatable to the reader.
The basic rule of thumb is that anything the narrator knows, the reader should know. If the narrator doesn't know something or is in denial about something, then the narrator is unreliable, but if the reader and the narrator are emotionally congruent, it usually works as a story. But if the narrator knows something and isn't in denial about it, then witholding that information from the reader may create an unreliable writer scenario. If the narrator knows something but doesn't convey this to the reader, then the writer might want to take a second look at whether the narrator is acting consistent or whether the writer is trying to create a "gotcha" ending or create some kind of "false mystery". The writer might want to check to see if they're telling the story from the correct point of view. If there is sufficient incongruency between the reader and the narrator, the reader may lose interest with the story because the writer severed the connection between narrator and reader.
If the narrator and reader are emotionally incongruent, if the reader is feeling something very different from what the narrator is feeling, then the writer risks disconnecting the reader from the story.
A perfect demonstration of this power is in the movie "Sixth Sense". The story is told from the point of view of Dr. Malcolm Crowe (played by Bruce Willis). The movie opens with Malcolm getting shot by one of his more psychotic patients. It then shifts to a point some time later where Malcolme starts helping a new patient, a young boy named Cole Sear (played by Haley Joel Osment). The movie follows Malcolm and Cole as they try to sort out Cole's problem of seeing ghosts. Finally, towards the end, they realize that the ghosts have unfinished business and if Cole helps them resolve that, then the ghosts will go away.
It is at this point near the end of the moview that Malcolm realizes that he himself is one of the ghosts that had some unfinished business, that he had to say goodbye to his wife. Malcolm did not know he was a ghost until the end.
From a narrative perspective, this results in a congruency between the POV character and the audience. Malcolm thought he was a therapist tryign to help a kid, so did the audience. When Malcolm realized that he was a ghost, the shock of that realization was felt by Malcolm as much as it was felt by the audience.
In the case of "The Sixth Sense", it turns out that the narrative character, Malcolm, is an unreliable narrator to some extent. He didn't know he was a ghost, so he never mentioned that fact to the reader.
Had "The Sixth Sense" been told from the point of view of Cole, Cole knew immediately that Malcolm was one of the ghosts haunting him, and Cole as narrator would have conveyed this information to the audience as part of his story telling. At the end of the story, when Malcolm realized that he too was a ghost, it wouldn't have been a surprise to the audience.
The problem with some stories is that what the writer calls an "unreliable narrator" is really an "unreliable writer".
Imagine if "The Sixth Sense" had been told from Cole's point of view. Imagine that in telling his story from his point of view, that Cole "forgets" to mention to the audience that Malcolm is a ghost.
When Malcolm told the story from his point of view, Malcolm didn't know he was a ghost. So, he didn't mention it to the audience until he found out himself towards the end of the movie. If Cole tells his version of the story, he immediately knew that Malcolm was a ghost and would have told the audience this information.
It might be possible to make a great version of the story from Cole's poitn of view, but it would start by Cole saying that there's these ghosts following him around and one of them is a therapist named Malcolm. The story arc would not be about Malcolm's realization that he was a ghost. There would be no surprise for the audience at the end, because Cole told them at the beginning.
But imagine that the writer decided to tell the story of "The Sixth Sense" from Cole's point of view, but decided to withold from the audience what Cole knows: that Malcolm is a ghost. Sometime near the end of the story, Malcolm would realize he is a ghost, and Cole would say something like "Yeah, I knew all along".
The audience is following the story from Cole's point of view. They are in Cole's shoes. They're feeling everything Cole is feeling. They're thinking everything Cole is thinking. And then it turns out that they're really not. The connection between the audience and Cole is violently severed when the audience realizes that Cole knew something but didn't convey it to them.
The audience comes out of their trance-like state of living the story of Cole's life and is suddenly aware that they're watching a movie. The audience is feeling something that Cole is not. Cole knew Malcolm is a ghost. The audience is shocked that Malcolm is a ghost. This separation of feelings, this incongruency of emotion, disconnects the audience from the POV character, and a writer should be extremely wary of disconnecting their audience from the POV character.
Now, if Cole was in denial that what he was seeing was ghosts, and he tried to interact with all these visions as if they were somehow real flesh and blood people, then Cole would narrate the story about this flesh and blood therapist who is tryign to help him. And at the end, Cole would have to come to terms with the fact that Malcolm is a ghost and however Cole felt about that, the audience would be feeling similar things.
But for a writer to choose a character who knows something and that character is not in some form of self-denial about that something, and for that writer to write the story so that the character fails to mention this matter-of-fact information to the reader, can create a incongruency that separates the reader/audience from the story. The writer becomes unreliable, not the narrator.
Sometimes unreliable writing can work for a story. A famous example is the movie "The Sting". The story is told from the point of view of Johnny Hooker (played by Robert Redford). Johnny seeks out Henry Gondorff (played by Paul Newman) to pull a con or sting on a big time criminal, Doyle Lonnegan. The main arc of the story is Johnny and Henry setting up the con on Doyle.
In the last half of the movie, some feds show up and put pressure on Johnny to turn on Henry. And we watch Johnny squirm as he tries to protect his friend, and then finally surrenders and agrees to betray Henry. At the big finale of the movie, as Johnny and Henry are putting the con on Lonnegan, the feds bust in and arrest everyone. The feds have a crooked cop whisk Lonnegan away. Once the cop and Lonnegan are out of the room, the feds reveal themselves to be part of the con. Johnny and Henry knew them, and knew they were part of the sting. When Henry was squirming under interrogation, he was acting. It is revealed that the whole thing had been set up to get the dirty cop off of Johnny's back and use him to get Lonnegan as far away as possible.
The incongruency is that the audience was feeling scared for Johnny while the feds were interrogating him, but in reality, Johnny knew it was all part of the con.
So, why does this work in "The Sting"?
It's a combination of several factors. First of all, the subplot with the feds was not the main story arc. It was part of the con added to deal with the crooked cop. Secondly, the incongruency was revealed at the end of the movie, when the audience has to see credits rolling and get their coat and leave the theater. Being reminded that you're watching a movie just before credits roll isn't as damaging as being reminded you're watching a movie in the middle of the movie. Third, the feelings of incongruency between the audience and Johnny about the true nature of the feds was minor compared to the congruency that both felt excitement and relief that the whole sting had been successfully pulled off. And finally, the movie was called "The Sting", was about two conmen, was about things not being as they seem, about pulling the wool over someone's eyes, and this was one way to have the audience experience a little bit of what it is like to be conned, without completely disconnecting them from the point of view characters.
The writers were "unreliable" in the sense that the narrator Johnny knew the feds were in on the con, but withheld that information from the audience. But it worked for "The Sting" because it was, in some ways, expected. The audience wanted to experience the con on some level, while still remaining connected with the narrator.
As a writer, creating a story where the narrating character knows something but doesn't reveal that to the audience is flirting with disconnecting your audience from your story. It can become problematic.
Some general rules of thumb:
Don't create incongruency between the narrator and audience until after the climax. After the climax, during the denoument, you can reveal a twist and disconnect the audience from the narrator and the damage will be less because the audience got the payoff of the climax, and the denoument is just preparing them for the credits to roll. They're preparing to leave the story and go back to the real world anyway. They're getting their coats, looking for their purse, picking up their trash and getting ready to leave. Doing something that informs them that they're watching a movie or story won't be nearly as damaging as if you did it in the middle of the story.
Don't make the withheld information into a "false mystery" or "contrived suspense" for the reader. If the narrator knows the truth, but withholds the information for no good reason, it could be because the writer wants to create some "false mystery" for the reader. A true mystery is told from the point of view of a character who doesn't know who the killer is. Witholding information in order to sustain some "mystery" or "suspense" may indicate the story is either beign told from the wrong point of view, or the story itself doesn't have enough suspense to make it interesting.
Don't make the incongruency be a major component of the emotional connection of the story. The feds were a minor subplot in "The Sting". If the story had ended with Johnny revealing that he in fact had been working for Lonnegan from the beginning, it would be a massive incongruency between the audience and their experience of Johnny as narrator. An extreme example of this is the not uncommon curse ending of "It was all a dream". With this one line, everything the reader experienced up to that point is destroyed. That the "feds" were really part of the bigger Sting is more palatable to the reader.
The basic rule of thumb is that anything the narrator knows, the reader should know. If the narrator doesn't know something or is in denial about something, then the narrator is unreliable, but if the reader and the narrator are emotionally congruent, it usually works as a story. But if the narrator knows something and isn't in denial about it, then witholding that information from the reader may create an unreliable writer scenario. If the narrator knows something but doesn't convey this to the reader, then the writer might want to take a second look at whether the narrator is acting consistent or whether the writer is trying to create a "gotcha" ending or create some kind of "false mystery". The writer might want to check to see if they're telling the story from the correct point of view. If there is sufficient incongruency between the reader and the narrator, the reader may lose interest with the story because the writer severed the connection between narrator and reader.
If the narrator and reader are emotionally incongruent, if the reader is feeling something very different from what the narrator is feeling, then the writer risks disconnecting the reader from the story.
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I just love Young Catherine and Hinton's story too, perhaps more than Cathy and Heathcliff's but that's the one that gets all the movies etc made about it. And the narrative pov is just so imaginative though it really got flamed by her contemporary critics, shows what they knew lol.
