: Re: 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

@Carla500

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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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