Preserve "The Reveal" vs lying to the reader
My story involves a kind of plot-twist towards the end. The problem is that the one of the sources of the misdirection comes from a kind of "Story so far" chapter towards the beginning.
It sets up what all the characters know (or at least think they know) about the last few years of a journey they have been on, during which events have happened unbeknownst to (most of) the characters, and other things didn't happen the way the characters believe they did. But the chapter is a summary to explain all this to the reader.
The story itself starts three years into the journey.
The problem is this. I want the reader to have similar knowledge to the characters, so they will be surprised by the reveal.
But I can't have the narrator simply lie to the reader, or leave out vital information that would obviously appear in a "how we got here" summary without it being silly or feeling contrived.
(e.g. it would be like in a novelisation of The Sixth Sense, the author describing in detail Bruce Willis'
operation after he was shot and heavily implying that it was a success.
)
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2 answers
You appear to be writing your "the story so far" from the point of view of an omniscient narrator, hence your concern abut lying. Instead, describe events through a character lens.
You can do this by writing these parts from the point of view of a particular character -- treat it as a speech, diary, or other thing that the character wrote. Another way to do that is to narrate rather than tell:
The story so far: Bob and Carol have identified the fingerprints found at the murder scene and tracked the killer to his lair. During a long stake-out they watched the housekeeper come and go. Late that night they saw a man emerge, face covered by his hoodie, and drive away. Carefully they followed, headlights off, to see where the trail led.
Unbeknownst to them, Bob and Carol should have been paying more attention to the housekeeper -- the man in the car is a red herring. You know that, but they don't -- and neither does your reader.
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But I can't have the narrator simply lie to the reader
Sure you can. That's called an unreliable narrator.
Instead of having a generic narrator-to-reader chapter, your "The Story So Far" material can be delivered via some other medium, or two characters who aren't in your story otherwise. It can be a newspaper article, a series of emails, a radio broadcast, two people talking, a lecture, or anything else.
So have a history teacher talking to a class. Write the introduction to a thesis. Make it a religious sermon, or a mom talking to her child, telling the child The Story So Far.
Any of these narrators have the potential to be unreliable — to edit, to omit, to lack information, to embroider, to editorialize. Your reader gets just the information you want, and you haven't outright lied.
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