How to Write an Unreliable Narrator Readers Still Root For

When Gone Girl took the world by storm in 2014, Gillian Flynn managed to do something seemingly new. She made us trust a character we shouldn’t. Hence, the unreliable narrator was really on the map.

(The Cost of Marketing Our Own Books.)

People hopped on this train with wild abandon. In thrillers, specifically, unreliable narrators can pop up everywhere. And they did for quite some time. Now, with so many books published each and every year, readers say they’re tired of being “tricked.” For writers, we worry the device has definitely been overused. Critics argue that unreliability is a shortcut, a gimmick designed to manufacture twists rather than focusing on the story.

I disagree.

I never wrote an unreliable narrator until my second book, Because You're Mine. I crafted a character who people rooted for. It wasn't until the very last chapter that the reader learned who she really was. Though that book was published in 2019, it was recently chosen for a book club. I had to brush up on all the minutiae of a book written so long ago (as I’ve since written seven more novels). While this character is ultimately the villain, one woman in the audience shook her head and raised her hand. “The villain?” She asked, confused. “I thought she was the hero.” She began to spin this entire new story around who my character was. How she wasn’t unreliable at all but the only character that should be trusted. She wasn’t a sociopath! She was a goddess! A damned hero!

I listened to her with fascination, wondering if the topic of an unreliable narrator could always be up for interpretation.

While unreliable narrators are inherently clever, they are also profoundly human. When done “correctly,” they won’t push readers away but pull them closer. They can mirror how we actually experience the world: through memory gaps, emotional blind sports, fear, and self-protection. While many readers feel that an unreliable narrator is dishonest, what we have to prove as writers is that, in their own minds, they can be trusted. They should.

Since that second novel of mine, I’ve written many more novels with unreliable narrators, particularly in domestic suspense. What I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) is that readers don’t need characters to be truthful, necessarily. But they do need them to be emotionally legible. They must establish trust with the reader.

I like to think that characters readers root for aren’t just deceptive masterminds (though I do love a good twist as much as the next person). What all of our complicated characters do is one thing: They try their best to survive their own stories.

To me, the most important distinction when writing an unreliable narrator is this:

Are they actually lying to the reader or are they lying to themselves?

Outright deception (i.e., deliberately withholding facts, manipulating the narrative voice, planting false clues) can work in short bursts. But it rarely, if ever, sustains a full novel unless it’s grounded in something more psychologically true. Readers can often sense when a narrator is playing games versus when they are genuinely confused or frightened.

Self-deception, on the other hand, is endlessly compelling.

If a character “believes” what they’re telling us, even if it’s “wrong,” then we lean in. We recognize the instinct because we, too, have rewritten our own pasts just to make them more bearable. That is what it means to be human, right? We downplay moments that threaten our identity, we inflate others to justify our choices, we revise our stories from the past to fit into a clean narrative. 

In my own work, unreliability almost always emerges from trauma, grief, or fear. A character is desperately trying to keep themselves safe or hold themselves together. They may not even be aware of what they’re doing, just like we might not either.

Questions to consider:

One reason unreliable narrators get a bad rap is that the writer sometimes starts with the twist and then builds a narrator around the story to serve that twist. I think the most well-crafted unreliable narrators are constructed not to surprise us but to make sense of themselves. It’s about who they are, what they’ve endured, and what they’re willing to risk to get what they want.

I love to explore grief in my books, as it’s such a powerful portal for making bad decisions. So is shame. So is unprocessed childhood trauma. Loss. For instance, two people can witness the same event and come away with completely different versions of what happened. I love constructing absolute truths in an unreliable character’s mind.

When unreliability is treated as a psychological consequence rather than a narrative device, the story can deepen. For example, in my forthcoming novel, Dear Mother, unreliability is really inseparable from grief. The narrator’s version of events is shaped by loss, loyalty, and a deep need to believe a particular story about her past and the people in it. What she discovers, however, about who she can rely on and who she can’t, is something else entirely.

Questions to consider:

Readers are remarkably forgiving when they feel emotionally safe in a story. They will follow a narrator who misremembers, misinterprets, or even misleads them as long as they trust the emotional contract.

An emotionally honest narrator lets us see her fears, her desires, and her justifications. Even when her conclusions are wrong, her feelings are not. That builds intimacy and vulnerability with the readers. While we may not believe her version of events, we believe her.

Sometimes, if you’re writing or reading an unreliable narrator, this is where it can go off the rails. The voice can become evasive or even withholding. The narrator can sometimes dodge emotional consequences, which leaves readers not only feeling tricked but excluded.

Questions to consider:

Planting doubt inside an unreliable narrator requires restraint and patience. The goal is to keep readers fully immersed while allowing uncertainty to take shape quietly in the background. Doubt works best when it builds gradually, gathering weight over time instead of unveiling itself in a shocking moment. (Though again, sometimes shocking moments work beautifully.)

Other characters can carry this work through what they notice, hesitate over, or what they decline to confirm. These moments land even when the narrator brushes past them. Readers tend to hold onto what a narrator might easily dismiss.

Doubt gains power when it grows out of moments where the narrator’s reaction carries more intensity, defensiveness, or calm than the situation seems to warrant. Readers sense these mismatches instinctively. Given something real to observe, they begin drawing their own conclusions, and they stay with the story because of it.

Questions to consider:

So why do unreliable narrators endure?

Because they reflect us.

We are all the unreliable narrators of our own lives. We revise. We forget. We excuse. We emphasize. We tell stories that help us sleep at night. Fiction that acknowledges this is just mirroring the human experience.

When writers treat unreliability as a human condition rather than a narrative stunt, it can work well.

And as long as humans remain complicated, fearful, grieving, self-protective creatures, readers will continue to root for characters who are struggling, because we too are struggling.

Where in our lives are we unreliable?

And how can we best showcase that on the page?

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