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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/40410
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/40410
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

> How can I convey her inner conflict and inability to trust herself in an effective way?

You have to first make the reader be willing to trust her, then voice her inner questions, and only finally start showing a ever increasing amount of factual contradictions.

At first, pose her as the unique undisputed narrator. Pitch her loneliness, her distress, paint everything bleaker than it could possibly be, but offer no contradictory evidence. If you need to contradict her, give her point of view that she honestly made a mistake, but everyone would have made the same mistake based on what she could have known.

Hundreds pages later, voice her inner questions about days which she exposed earlier, show that she cannot recall what happened, or that she may be considering retelling some facts in a different manner. E.g. "She saw again the mangled bodies of her companions, dead after that horrible fall. She stood, silent, shaken by the sudden worry that crawled under her skin. Could a fall really bend a body in such a hominous manner? Could falling from any height tear bones and sinews apart?"

Finally, in the last third of your book, expose her lies. Make her aware that she tells and retells the story to suit her whims. E.g. "those bodies again, spread at the bottom of the pillar, eaten by the wolves. Wolves! As if she had seen one! It must have been the crows then, and the ravens. Or the rats. Or, perhaps, a maddening human, driven that insatiable hunger that still rumbled in her stomach. Still, even in her wildest dreams she could not force herself to even touch any bit of that succulent flesh."

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