Unreliable Narrator: A Creative Writing Exercise

What Is an Unreliable Narrator?

An Unreliable Narrator is a first-person or close-third-person narrator whose account of events cannot be fully trusted. They might be lying to the reader, lying to themselves, mentally ill, too young to understand what they observe, or simply operating with incomplete information.

This technique has produced some of literature's most celebrated works — Gone Girl, The Catcher in the Rye, We Need to Talk About Kevin. The power lies in the gap between what the narrator says and what the reader gradually understands to be true.

On Writaya, Unreliable Narrator is part of the Character & Empathy theme and develops your Empathy, Communication, and Logic dimensions simultaneously.

Why It Matters for Writers

Writing an unreliable narrator requires you to hold two stories at once — the story the narrator tells and the story that is actually happening. This dual awareness deepens your understanding of how perspective shapes truth, which is fundamentally an empathy skill.

As discussed in our Communication skill guide, controlling what the reader knows and when they know it is the highest form of narrative communication. Unreliable narration is the ultimate exercise in information control.

How to Practice Unreliable Narrator

Step 1: Write a scene from a reliable perspective — a straightforward account of what happens.

Step 2: Rewrite the same scene from an unreliable perspective. Choose a type of unreliability: the narrator omits a crucial detail, misinterprets what they see, or deliberately lies about one element.

Step 3: Plant clues. The reader should be able to detect the unreliability if they pay attention. A narrator who claims to be calm but describes their hands shaking. A narrator who mentions details that contradict their own story.

Step 4: Write a third version where the unreliability is more subtle. The narrator is not lying — they just cannot see themselves clearly. This is the most realistic and powerful form of unreliability.

Try It Now: A 5-Minute Exercise

Write a first-person account of a party where the narrator claims they had a wonderful time. But through the details they include — how often they checked their phone, how they describe the other guests, what they noticed about the food — make it clear to the reader that the narrator was lonely and miserable. Never state this directly.

Tips for Getting the Most Out of This Technique

The best unreliable narrators do not know they are unreliable. A narrator who is deliberately deceiving the reader is interesting. A narrator who genuinely believes their distorted version is fascinating, because it reveals how self-deception works.

Use physical details to contradict the narrator's claims. The narrator says everything is fine, but they describe breaking a glass, sleeping poorly, and losing weight. The body betrays what the mind denies.

Read your unreliable narrator scenes to someone else. Ask them what they think is really happening. If they can detect the truth behind the narration, your clues are working. If they take the narrator at face value, your clues need strengthening.

Practice Unreliable Narrator on Writaya with exercises that challenge you to maintain dual narratives. The AI feedback evaluates both your surface storytelling and the subtext beneath it. Combine with POV Shift to see the same events from reliable and unreliable perspectives. Read our Character & Empathy theme guide for the full set.