1st person POV problems

[AliceScarlett]

I've just realised a couple of things that are difficult about 1st person POV:

1, We know from the off that the character didn't die because they're speaking.

2, Its past tense so the action feels a bit far removed.

3, Witholding information might make readers feel tricked. I want to hook people in, but then I'm getting the protagonist to pose questions that they already know the answers too.
Would being an unreliable character fix that?

I love unreliable narrators - I think your character would be a classic example of this.

I love first person, past tense. I feel as though a friend is sitting opposite you with a glass of wine telling you this extraordinary thing that happened to her. But your friend might not be telling the truth - and it doesn't even occur to you until the end of the story. I love it!

1. Yes absolutely, there’s no mystery, you know they didn’t die. Unless them being dead is the whole thing, like in ‘The Lovely Bones’, and then the character knows they are dead.
2. I disagree with this. 1st person narrators have a magical inhuman ability to remember everything that happened in exact detail and tell the story in a way that makes you think you’re actually there. It’s fine.
3. Agreed. When I feel a narrator is withholding information for no reason it makes me want to throw the book in a corner. One way to get round it is use an unreliable narrator. I always admire an author that pulls this off and I think of it as something very difficult to achieve. Immensely satisfying for the reader if you can do it well though, like ‘Remains of the Day’ and a lot of Ian McEwan.

Another thing you can do is have your narrator give hints about what will happen, e.g. ‘when I think about what happened later, it shouldn’t have surprised me’. The reason for withholding information is because they find it too difficult to talk about perhaps. It’s too emotional for them to reveal yet. Another is a novel like ‘Catcher in the Rye’. The narrator tells the story like they are telling an anecdote in real life- talks directly to the reader. Here the narrator can withhold information like you would in real life, saving the best bits for effect.

How does the catcher in the rye do it without it being frustrating?

Unreliable narrators are tricky. Maybe I can think of a good reason as to why my protagonist is holding things back. It's like "I'm going to tell you in-depth details of this amazing story, but actually I'm also going to hold back key points" how the hell do you get that right. Oliphant just annoyed me when she did it, it felt too obvious. But that book did really well. Maybe the hints need to be really subtle. I

Is there a way to almost say 'i know I'm holding this back, but I promise I'll tell you soon, just hang in there'?

I know that you're not writing a crime novel, but Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is considered to be one of the best novels featuring an unreliable narrator.

Ok, I'll read the first 2 chapters #standard. Thanks.

Having researched this a bit more I'm thinking the unreliable narrator needs a reason. Like a solid reason for being so unreliable. Fight Club: He was psychotic. Pi: He was starving to death in the ocean.

1st person present tense is really, really good if you want to avoid the ‘is she going to die or not’ thing. I read an amazing book where you think the story’s going one way and then near the middle the narrator dies suddenly. From that point everything switches to past sense.

I read a fantastic book where the narrator dies on the last line - first person, too!

They were writing from beyond the grave?

No, it ended mid-sentence as she was being killed.

How important is the information that's being withheld? I mean, if it's a thriller, and the POV character is the killer but doesn't mention it, that's one thing -- but characters can be wrong or deluded, or misinformed...? I mean, they can be deliberately manipulative in what they allow the reader to think, but can also be giving their interpretation of a situation/character according to information which is faulty.

Can you give us an example of something you don't want to tell the reader, which is causing you a problem?