concept

Unreliable Narrator

A storyteller whose account the reader cannot fully trust.

Origin

The technique is old (Don Quixote, Wuthering Heights, The Turn of the Screw) but the term was coined by critic Wayne Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961). Booth meant a narrator whose values diverge from the implied author's; the popular use is broader — any narrator who lies, misremembers, or sees the world askew.

Modern usage

Standard in book reviews and TV writing. Gone Girl, Fight Club, and American Psycho are the canonical 21st-century examples; the term gets reached for whenever a 'twist' is built on what the narrator failed to tell us.

The Fourth Wall

The imaginary boundary between fiction and audience — sometimes deliberately broken.

concept

Literary Devices

Plot Armor

The invisible protection that keeps key characters alive because the story needs them.

character

Literary Devices

Mary Sue

An implausibly perfect character — usually a thinly veiled self-insert by the author.

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