Writing the Unreliable Narrator: When Your Protagonist Makes Questionable Choices
Part 3 of Wilderness & Wisdom: A Master Class with Eowyn Ivey
When Your Protagonist Makes Questionable Choices
Picture this moment from Black Woods, Blue Sky: Birdie, a single mother with a six-year-old daughter, decides to move to an isolated mountain cabin. No electricity. No running water. No way to call for help.
With a man she barely knows.
As one reviewer confessed: "I was just screaming at her inside my head about everything she did and failed to do."
Yet somehow, that same reviewer kept reading. She had to know what happened to Birdie and her daughter Emaleen.
This is the paradox of the unreliable narrator: characters make questionable (or terrible) decisions that we simultaneously hate and can't stop following.
What Makes a Character Unreliable vs. Unlikable
Here's where most writers stumble: they confuse "flawed" with "annoying."
An unlikable character makes readers close the book.
An unreliable narrator makes readers turn pages faster, even while they're yelling at the protagonist.
The difference lies not in the character's choices, but in how you present those choices to readers.
Birdie drinks too much, parties when she should be parenting, and makes impulsive decisions that endanger her daughter.
On paper, she sounds insufferable.
But Ivey shows us why Birdie makes these choices without excusing them.
We understand her yearning for freedom, her exhaustion as a single mother, her hunger for the wilderness life she remembers from childhood.
We feel for Birdie and relate to her, and we want her to get a happy ending.
Character Development Through Poor Decisions
Understanding Motivation vs. Justification
Here's a crucial distinction for writing flawed characters: you must make their motivations understandable without making their actions justifiable.
Birdie's decision to move to Arthur's cabin may be risky—but it makes complete sense for someone desperate to escape judgment, yearning for natural beauty, and believing she's found love.
And when Birdie starts trying to spend time with Arthur in his bear form, we understand why she’s trying to connect—even while screaming at her to back away.
Show readers the emotional logic behind illogical choices.
When you understand why someone acts against their best interests, you can't help but invest in their journey, even when you disagree with their path.
The Power of Internal Conflict
One reason readers stay engaged with unreliable narrators is internal conflict. Birdie isn't oblivious to her poor choices—she's torn about them.
She knows bringing Emaleen to the wilderness is risky, but carries her rifle and keeps Emaleen close to keep her safe.
She questions whether Arthur is a good decision, but desperately wants it to be.
Characters who struggle with their own decisions feel more human than those who charge forward with blind confidence.
This internal struggle keeps readers hoping the character will make better choices, creating forward momentum even through frustrating sequences.
Show Consequences Without Lecturing
Ivey never stops the story to explain why Birdie's choices are problematic. Instead, she shows the natural consequences.
Emaleen gets lost in the woods after being left home alone. Food runs dangerously low after Arthur ravages the cabin. Birdie is injured after approaching Arthur’s bear form.
Let the story world react to poor choices rather than having the narrator judge them.
Readers are smart—they'll connect the dots between decisions and outcomes without heavy-handed explanation.
Techniques for Keeping Readers Invested
Give Them Something to Root For
Even when Birdie makes questionable parenting choices, we see her fierce love for Emaleen. Even when she's reckless, we see her courage and resilience.
Every unreliable narrator needs at least one deeply sympathetic quality that readers can hold onto.
This gives readers a reason to keep hoping the character will find their way, even through their worst moments.
Use Other Characters as Reality Checks
Arthur's father Warren serves this function in Black Woods, Blue Sky.
His concern for Birdie and Emaleen validates readers' worries without the narrator having to acknowledge them directly.
Surround your unreliable narrator with characters who can voice the concerns your readers are feeling.
This creates dramatic irony—we know things the protagonist doesn't, or doesn't want to admit.
Balance Sympathy and Frustration
The key to successful unreliable narrators is emotional balance.
Push readers too far toward frustration, and they'll abandon the character. Lean too heavily on sympathy, and you'll remove the tension.
Birdie oscillates between moments where we completely understand her choices (her joy in the wilderness, her desperate need for love) and moments where we want to shake her (ignoring obvious danger signs, prioritizing her desires over her daughter's safety).
Create a rhythm of connection and disconnection with your protagonist.
The Unreliable Narrator's Character Arc
Growth Through Consequences
The most satisfying unreliable narrators don't just make poor choices—they eventually face the full weight of those choices and grow from them.
Without spoiling Black Woods, Blue Sky, Birdie's arc involves confronting the gap between her romantic dreams and harsh reality. Her growth comes through accepting responsibility rather than escaping it.
Character development happens when protagonists stop running from the consequences of their actions and start dealing with them.
Whether or not they learn their lesson fast enough to avoid a tragic ending is up to you.
Earned Redemption
If your unreliable narrator is going to find redemption, they must earn it through genuine change, not just good intentions.
Show don't tell this transformation through concrete actions, not internal monologue.
Readers will forgive almost any earlier transgression if they see authentic growth and genuine effort to make amends.
They will also forgive poor choices if they see the narrator drawing close to their dreams. As Birdie and Arthur fall in love, we want things to work out, despite the dangers and red flags.
Common Unreliable Narrator Mistakes
The Victim Trap
Don't make your character so victimized by circumstances that they bear no responsibility for their choices. This removes agency and makes them passive rather than unreliable.
Yes, your protagonist might have trauma, difficult circumstances, or limited options. But they still need to be making active choices, even poor ones.
A character who only reacts to terrible things happening to them isn't unreliable—they're just unfortunate.
Readers need to see your protagonist choosing their path, not just stumbling down it.
Birdie sometimes feels like she is trapped and a victim of life, but throughout the entire book, she makes her own choices in her attempts to break free.
The Excuse Generator
Avoid constantly providing explanations for bad behavior. Let actions speak louder than justifications.
It's tempting to follow every questionable decision with an internal monologue about why the character "had to" do it. This actually weakens your unreliable narrator by making them too self-aware.
True unreliable narrators often don't fully understand their own motivations.
They might rationalize their choices, but they shouldn't always be right about their reasoning. Let readers see patterns the character misses.
For Birdie, she is trying to feel alive and break free from the crushing weight of the world—something many readers can relate to. In her attempts, she takes risks that might not make sense if she were to stand back and look at it logically.
But she’s not making decisions logically; she’s reacting emotionally.
The Redemption Rush
Don't try to fix everything in the final chapters. Character growth should be gradual and hard-won throughout the story.
If your protagonist spends 200 pages making terrible choices, then suddenly becomes wise and responsible in the last 50 pages, readers won't buy it.
Real character change is messy, with setbacks and small victories scattered throughout the narrative.
Plant seeds of growth early, show struggle and backsliding in the middle, and earn any redemption through consistent effort over time.
Birdie takes risks, and both she and her daughter reap the consequences. In the end, Birdie is not redeemed as some “hero” character; she’s viewed honestly as a complex human with beautiful and tragic aspects.
Your Action Plan: Writing Compelling Unreliable Narrators
1. Map the Motivation
For every questionable choice your protagonist makes, write down three underlying emotional reasons. What fear, desire, or wound drives this decision?
2. Find the Internal Conflict
What part of your character knows they're making a mistake? How does this knowledge create tension within them? Why do they not listen to the voice of reason?
3. Balance the Scales
List your protagonist's most frustrating qualities, then list their most sympathetic ones. You need both in roughly equal measure.
Readers will follow flawed characters anywhere, as long as they believe those characters are worth saving.
4. Test Reader Investment
At your story's midpoint, ask: "Would readers still care what happens to this character?"
If not, strengthen their sympathetic qualities or clarify their growth potential.
The best unreliable narrators don't just make poor choices—they make the kinds of poor choices we fear we might make in their situation.
Eowyn Ivey understands that flawed characters aren't broken characters.
They're human characters, struggling with the same tensions between desire and wisdom, hope and reality, love and fear that drive us all.
That's not unreliable narration—that's recognizable humanity.
Next in our Wilderness & Wisdom series, we'll step away from craft to explore something just as crucial: how Eowyn Ivey's minimalist website design perfectly embodies her brand—and what it teaches us about standing out in a crowded digital world—in “Less is More: Why Eowyn Ivey's Minimalist Website Design is Pure Genius.” (Coming Soon!)
Or start at the beginning of the Wilderness & Wisdom series, with “How to Write Setting as Character: Lessons from Eowyn Ivey's Alaskan Wilderness.” (Coming Soon!)
