“One remembers points that one has forgotten and one explains them all the more minutely since one recognizes that one has forgotten to mention them in their proper places and that one may have given, by omitting them, a false impression.”
— The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
Technique
In “The Good Soldier,” Ford Madox Ford creates an unreliable narrator who tells a story in first-person that is full of half-truths and contradictions. The narrator tries to remember events and people, so he’s constantly revising his story based on epiphanies happening in real-time. It’s like listening to someone piece together their life story after a head injury.
What’s shocking about the narrator is he admits that he’s unobjective, biased, unreliable, and vengeful. In the passage above, which happens near the end of the book, the narrator plainly explains that the key to his unreliable narration is his faulty memory.
Use
With a four-step process, you can undercut your story like Ford Madox Ford’s unreliable narrator:
- Share important context or background information about an event or story with a one-sided perspective
- Leave out key details about the event or story
- Flash back to the event later in the story and add details or contradict previous details
- Present multiple conclusions or a single inconclusive view and let the reader decipher
The Periplous 