Not too long ago, I shared about my love for unreliable narrators in fiction and I even came out with a list. But recently I had a discussion about these narrators and I realized some of my friends had pretty serious opinions about them as well. And not everyone loves them. Shocking!!
It was for me, at least. I mean what is there to not like in them, right? RIGHT?
Credit: Tenor
Well, my so called friends (am seriously reconsidering my allies here!) gave me bunch of reasons to support, which I begrudgingly have to accept, that the unreliable narrators might not be for everyone.
But I am sure there is at least one kind of unreliable narrator that each of us like. They are not all the same!!!
Types of unreliable narrators
Yes today I am gonna talk about the kinds of unreliable narrators that we usually find in fictional world and why they are so important in their books. Ready for the ride?
Unreliable narrators that are naïve
Okay not totally naïve but they can’t help it. For some reason they are not fully aware of what is happening to/around them, maybe by their own doing or not.
For example, Jack from the Room was inside the shed for years before he was broken out and seeing the world with the innocence of a young boy is definitely not reliable.
Unreliable narrators whose perception is misleading
There are many characters that fall into this category in the recent times. Christopher Boone from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, for instance, cannot be taken at his face value, as he on the Asperger’s / Autistic spectrum and his understanding of things is quite literal and lacks depth.
Patrick Peoples from The Silver Linings Playbook and Charlie from the Perks of being a wallpaper have repressed memories, while Rachel from the girl on the train has been under the influence of alcohol almost the entire time of the story.
And these books largely depend on these narrators and otherwise would have been another run of the mill novel.
Omitting to state the facts is also kinda lying, of course. But Eva does that so well in We need to talk about Kevin. The whole books is written in the form of letters to her estranged husband and she talks about everything but why Kevin did what he did (mass shooting at his school) and if she did enough to prevent that from happening.
I recently read the Woman in the Window for my book club and found that Dr Anna Fox holds back a lot from others and the reader as well. Well, on a happier note that backfires right at her and that plays so well into holding the suspense to the story.
Unreliable narrators that outright lie and manipulate
These are my favorite kind of unreliable narrators!
Man, they toy with us and mislead us perfectly into their trap without breaking a sweat. Take Patrick from American Psycho, he is suave, well read and smart and he commits gruesome murders with a finesse (or not!). His unreliability is the only thing that left us questioning the reality at the end.
Credit: Giphy
I love Gone Girl and I adore Gillian Flynn‘s writing and her unreliable characters (yes there are many). Nick and Amy seem sincere and innocent until we start unraveling their traps and deceit. I mean talk about the plot twists these unreliable narrators provide.
Final words
Yes, they misrepresent facts, break our trusts and some time lie to our faces even. But so what?
Credit: Giphy
I mean what narrator is truly objective and trustworthy! They all talk about the things they believe are true. So what if these narrators add a bit of bias, color the truth or even hold stuff back from the reader? They are as amazing as their lying conniving selves they can be, to me!
You know what, I will tell you guys myself! I am an indecisive schmuck when it comes to choosing my next read. And I used to think it was normal too, until I saw those beautiful posts on monthly and weekly TBRs. Well, as much as they inspired me, they broke me.
How I Choose My Next Read?
So I guess I need a system. FOR CHOOSING MY NEXT READ. That makes sense doesn’t it? I should not be wasting an hour or two of my precious time on deciding what I am reading next instead of reading it already. Especially with the tremendous growth I have been showing when it came to planning of late. It should be a cake walk right?
Let us get on with it, I will choose my next read right away WITHOUT WASTING ANYMORE TIME.
Method 1: Choosing the book (ARC – Advance review copies) that is closest to the publishing date.
Well, these seem obvious right? With planning and I being so chummy these days, I just have to choose one that is near the deadline. I never thought it was going to be this simple. Now I can just read!
BUT.. But I don’t feel like waging a war with the zombie right now. Maybe, I am in the mood for a romance, especially since it is winter and all.
Let me check the Goodreads’ romance shelf.
*Ends up ordering two or three or ten books and spends the night worrying about how broke I am*
Method 2: Choose a book from the recommendations and reviews of your favorite blogger
Today is new day and a new beginning. Let me pick one book before I have my morning coffee so that I can start reading while I commute or run errands.
Let us make this easy. Pick the one that your favorite blogger recommended recently.
But which one? I have so many favorite bloggers and they have so many books on their recommendation.
It is going to take a while, guys. Let me get that coffee first.
*Ends up blog hopping till it is dark, skipping breakfast, lunch and survives on coffee*
Method 3: Pick one that has stayed the longest on your TBR
I will just pick the one that I have in my TBR already.
May be the one I added the first, like the First in first out. This method works so well for stocks in the stores, it should work me too.
OMG, I need to read THIS, I have no idea why I have not read this. It has been so long that I don’t even know where it is. I just have to find this on my shelf.
Well, that is a bust. I have no clue where it is.
Method 4: Pick the one right next to you, literally.
You know what? I am just going to pick that random book that is physically near me and save the time instead of searching for one in these heap.
But my e-reader has like 100s of books and it is near me as it should be as always. Should I pick that one up already? The ‘latest one I added in that’ makes more sense right? What am I if not the most sensible one!
I am going for it. And I am just going to ignore the hard copies and their beautiful covers. Like I care about them. Or do I?
Method 5: Take a quiz or two
Sigh I give up. I can’t do this. I wish someone told me what to read. Someone like Goodreads but not exactly that.
I love Pinterest. Not just for saving ideas or recipes to try out later, but also for my blog. I am not sure how much traffic that has generated for me yet but it definitely has.
Like everyone around here I caught with the Pinterest train when it came out. But I used it mostly for personal stuff like saving for holiday decor or a hairstyle that I wanted to try out for an occasion.
While I knew about group boards that worked well for so many bloggers, I was reluctant to join them because well I am majorly a book blogger and many of my posts are going to have a book cover as its feature image. That may not be so attractive to the other bloggers. So never joined them.
But then I joined some amazing group boards that are mainly for book bloggers and here I am pinning away to glory. If you are not following me yet on Pinterest, ensure you do right away.
Now that I have established I like Pinterest, though not as much as Twitter, I still hate having to navigate those atrociously huge images in a post. Especially when you have more than one Pinterest size image. There I said it.
For the uninitiated, the recommended Pinterest image size is 735px X 1102px according to Canva, which is definitely huge. I know some of us dislike seeing too many GIFs in blog posts but imagine having to see these humongous images.
What if I say you don’t have to see them at all? In fact all my posts have a pinnable image or two, but they are never visible when you scroll down the post. And it is definitely not difficult.
If you switch back to visual mode, the picture will blocked as below.
Save and publish the draft. You are good to go. Don’t worry, all the other images and GIFs will be still visible and can be pinned if you still want to.
You can still add the blog images from your site to Pinterest like you do usually.
Click Save from site on the Pinterest website and add your link there.
Either way you will find this Pinterest image ready to be pinned. And if you click on it, you will be directed to my post, like you would expect.
Now you will be able to share as many images as you want from your posts, but without pesky images bothering your readers.
(Psst.. There is a pinterest image hidden in this post as well. Just try clicking the pin button here)
Let me know if you tried this on your blog. Do you want to see these small yet handy solutions for your blog? Feel free to ask me if you have any doubts.
There comes a time when every author has to put an end to their writing and start seeing their work objectively. Their objectivity would go a long away in making their manuscript, or book if I may, appealing to the masses. Of course the beta readers and editors would do their jobs but you would be glad you did your part before sending it off to the professionals.
Much like typos and grammatical errors, a glaring plot hole would turn me off from reading the book completely. When we say plot hole we generally think of the inconsistencies in the storyline or the plot itself, but it is much more than that, don’t you think?
In fact anything that would make your readers go ‘what just happened?‘ in a not so expected way is just the plot holes we are talking about.
As an author you are expected to have already fixed the plot holes when you send your book off to editing and critiquing, but there are some plot holes that are sneaky and may not be visible to your eyes, especially after repeated readings. This makes the use of a beta reader indispensable.
A plot hole is a collective term to all the sneaky inconsistencies in the narrative or a character development of a book or a movie/television programme, to paraphrase the Oxford English Dictionary.
This does not include those apparent inconsistencies that will be solved in the oncoming chapters or books. We can divide such inconsistencies into three heads based on where they may be found.
Inconsistencies in the plot
Plot holes refers to any inconsistencies in the plot or any event in the story line. Plot refers to anything from the place, time and events that take place in those places and times.
Inconsistencies could be illogical, contradictory or ignored. Let us examples of each of these cases.
Illogical plot hole:
A character who is terminally ill gets well miraculously just to be a part of a love triangle.
Contradictions:
A character that living 2000 km away from his lady love, drives back to her hometown in a single night to save her from the villain.
A plot that is ignored or forgotten:
A character that goes missing (i.e forgotten) all of a sudden for no reason.
2) Inconsistencies in the character development
We are never gonna hear the end of how Lily has brown eyes, when we all knew she and Harry had the same blue eyes. Or why Buzz has to pretend freeze around humans if he thought he was a real space ranger.
And that is exactly what we are talking about.
Anything that character does or does not do as the reader has been told to expect of him is an inconsistency and thus a plot hole.
Some examples of such holes are:
A mighty super villain has a change of heart about destroying the planet just after a small setback.
A protagonist that never grows, changes or is affected by the plot.
3) Inconsistencies in the world building
This is a major one, especially in the fantasy genre. The fictional world that we write for includes why things happen the way they do and why the characters react how they do.
We need to know the reasons and motivation behind the character’s actions before we can relate to them and continue to root for them. But when these fails, the readers stop caring about what happens to the characters and the plot.
Some examples of issues in terms of world building:
An antagonist whom we fail to see as powerful enough.
Sub plots that are not closed.
Why the lead falls for the female and why is it different from the other times?
While these plot holes may not be apparent to you, your readers are definitely going to find them out and it is critical that you should too. You could always reach to a friend, a fellow writer or a professional beta reader requesting them to give a read to weed these out.
Aside, I am considering to write more on these series, what do you say? Should I continue these writing topics? Let me know in the comment section.
Are there plot holes that do not fall in these headers? Do you plot holes turn off from reading further? What is the most annoying plot hole issue that you have read? And authors/writers, tell us about the plot hole you had and how you fixed Let us chat.
No two bookworms can be same, right? Even if we read similar books and have similar tastes in bookish things, we can’t all be the same, can we? And that is true especially in my case because most of my bookish habits are weird and eccentric.
Tell me how different am I in my bookish habits than you in the comment section below, won’t you?
10. I do not care for the book covers
Of course, I love a beautiful art work on the book as much as any one else.
But I do not buy or judge books based on their covers. And in case of e-books I rarely even glance or remember them. I know many of my fellow book bloggers who do wonderful displays with those book covers on #bookstagrams, but sigh I can not be one of them.
9. You can’t spoil it for me
I don’t care for spoilers as such but I don’t mind if I stumble upon a few by mistake.
I know it might spoil the suspense or even the ending of the story for some, not for me. While I am not one to jump to the last age to know the ending, I am okay with a few small details or a major twist that I hear anyway. You will never find asking me to spare the spoilers
8. People before books, I guess
I am the crazy bag lady (mostly) who always carries a book or five with me everywhere I go. Yet if I were reading a book and someone talks to me, I close the book and talk to them.
When I am reading a physical copy I always try and remember the page I stop at. In fact I don’t even own bookmarks except for the free ones that come with the books. What is the point of owning those fabulous. beautiful bookmarks when I seldom use them right?
I can only see those awesome people who use those bookmarks or anything that resembles it so cleverly. Sigh.
6. I try to pause my reading at page that ends with 5 or 0.
This is one of the habits that I formed right from my childhood and I can’t seem to break it. Remember I told I don’t use bookmarks and I try to remember where I stopped at. So to make matters easier, I used to stop only at pages that ended in fives or tens.
Well, you can consider this as my kinda ‘five more minutes’ before bed time.
5. Read the book before I watch the screen adaptations
I am not sure when this habit started but I always make sure I read the book before I can get myself to watch its series or movies adaptation. I know I have broken this rule once or twice, owing to ignorance about the book at all or just the sheer volume of the book. I have found some great books and classics at that.
I am definitely gonna keep up with this one, so that I can see my own imaginations.
4. I have poor memory for character names and settings
I remember the names of most of the people I have met in real life, but I forget the settings / locations and the names of the characters I read in the books. Okay not immediately but in a while and this makes me the worst candidate for reading books in series.
Oh, to overcome this disadvantage, I can say, I have even started noting the character names and locations in my reviews.
3. It takes me a while decide on the books
Though this is not a steadfast habit and there have been lots of books that I have loved right from the first chapter, I usually take a few minutes or hours off from the book to decide how I felt about it.
After the break I start recollecting what I liked and didn’t like about the book, since I don’t usually take notes for books I read for reviewing. This works for now I guess.
2. Audio books are a huge no-no for me
I have enjoyed a few audio books in the past but I feel they require to much effort from me. I have to try much harder to focus on the narrator’s voice than the writing or the story itself.
It is so draining and as you all know, the time taken usually is a lot more. For me reading comes naturally, listening not so much.
1. I jump into a book blindly
Like most of us, I add a lot of books to my to-be-read shelf from others recommendations and blogs. But I like reading a book with zero knowledge about it.I like to be surprised by how good the book turns out to be, or bad in some cases.
I don’t even read the blurb usually and it is a blessing, sometimes, that I have such a poor memory that I even forget the reviews I read when I added the book to my list.
It seems to me that I am the only one that have these habits. Let me know if you have or do any of these things and make me feel better, please.
If you had been following my blog for a while you might have realized that I don’t give up easily. Sure I come back here on my blog and bitch about how hard the book was to read, but I don’t usually give up on the book or as we book nerds call it DNF aka Did Not Finish.
I do wonder if that is a wrong thing to do sometimes a lot of times. I mean there are literally millions of other books in the world and why am I not reading something else that I would actually enjoy more. Well my dear fellow nerds, I am gonna tell you why.
10. I want to give it a chance or two.
I know many people who believe in giving up on books if they are not enjoying it in the first 50 pages! Oh but not me. I totally believe in second or er.. even fourth chances. I just don’t want to wonder how the book was after I quit on it. See I am just being fair.
9. I have spent way too much time on it.
I generally read fairly fast. It is only when I struggle to like a book I take longer to complete it. But I don’t want to give it up since I have already spent too much time on it. You see the conundrum- to give up or not!
I have a weird rule when it comes to book adaptation. Books before screen. Yes, when I hear about the new movie / series that is being adapted from a book, I would want to read the book before the visual details could spoil my imagination. I want to see my own movie inside my head before I could watch the larger one. I am sure most of y’all understand what I mean!
6. But I love this author.
As any bookworm would do, I have some serious author obsessions. It goes without saying if I read a book by an author and I love it, I am gonna pick their next one too, irrespective of the reviews and rumors. And even if I don’t like it right away, I somehow believe that I will grow on to to like it. Of course I have been let down by this assumption far too many times for my own good.
5. I promised them I would review.
Of all the reasons I have stated above, only this one could be considered legitimate.
As you all know I am currently open for accepting books for review and manuscripts for beta reading. And when I do accept such books/MS, I feel obliged to read it completely before I review them. Even if I hated it all the way.
4. ‘What is wrong with me?’
Most of the books I pick up for reading or add to my never ending TBR list are from other bloggers’ recommendations. While I don’t necessarily read the blurb or review before I read a book, when I struggle through a book and I am this close to giving up, the glowing recommendations it had had received pop up in my brain. That takes me down on a spiral that ultimately leads to ‘what is wrong with me?’
Solution: Read it and read it fully you might like it.
3. I work towards a goal, people
On a similar note, I have a personal rule that I would rate, review and / or count the book towards my reading challenge only when I finish a book. It means when I DNF a book, I don’t get to rant about it or even to add it up on my yearly challenge. With the yearly reading slump I am getting onto, I can’t afford to do that, can I?
You all know it. Reading Lolita or the Tale of two cities is always gonna be a bumpy ride. I can’t think of reading a classic without giving it up a few times, for a short while. I somehow get back to them and finish reading them even if it is a long term project. I mean what is life without a few challenges, right? RIGHT?
1. I have given up on my life.
Let us face it. Being a book worm and freelancer writer I do not have a life outside books and my laptop. So what am I losing in reading few more hundreds of pages before I can truly say ‘I hated this book’? I have given up on my life and books have taken over it.
Do you DNF comfortably? Or do you find reasons, like me, to keep pushing yourself? Are there any other reasons that you don’t give up? Let me know the most recent book that you DNF-ed.
