I’m going to have to write a LOT more about opinion later, but for now I did need to cover how it works with regard to details.
The thing I hadn’t realized until this morning as I write this, is that this IS how to pull off unreliable narrators. Looking back on Gone Girl or American Psycho or even The Murder of Rogery Ackroyd, the techniques that are being used to hornswaggle the reader are a) standard mystery tricks, but b) presented through a SWARM of emotionally-laden, opinionated details.
I already knew that the way to present a clue was to hide it in a swarm of information, and I already knew that as soon as Watson or Hastings (of Agatha Christie’s Poirot series) opens his mouth, that they’re going to dump a really strong opinion about exactly the wrong solution to a problem on the reader, just to be extra misleading. (As soon as I start agreeing with one of Agatha Christie’s “foil” characters I know I’m on the wrong track!)
But I hadn’t quite sussed out Patrick Bateman of American Psycho. So that’s pretty cool. I may pull that section out and make it bigger later, but for now I’m going to plan to put in an appendix with an exericise on how to break down some unreliable narration.
I plan to type in some American Psycho for myself, but I need to figure a good out-of-copyright example for this book. Hm.