: Distinguishing between unreliable frame narrator and narrator of framed story I'm writing a work which is bookended by a frame story with an unreliable narrator. How do I prevent confusion for

I'm writing a work which is bookended by a frame story with an unreliable narrator.

How do I prevent confusion for the reader when the frame narrator interjects? In the framed story, the characters have direct speech (quotation marks) and indirect speech (italics). What if the frame narrator has thoughts or indirect speech?
How can I lessen the confusion and improve readability?

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: Tolkien dealt with exactly the same situation in The Lord of the Rings, starting with the breaking of the Fellowship. For example, we have simultaneously Merry and Pippin being carried by orcs;

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@Steve161

In The Neverending Story, Michael Ende faces a somewhat similar challenge: the main character, Bastian, gets his hands on a book, and the narrative alternates between the book Bastian is reading, and his own actions - his thoughts with regards to the book, his more mundane actions with regards to skipping school.

Michael Ende solves this beautifully by using two colours: one narrative line is printed in green, the other in red. (And the book Bastian is reading is also printed in red and green, making the whole thing meta.)

If you do not wish to use colours, I would turn to using significantly different fonts. (Which is incidentally how paperback editions of The Neverending Story are printed.) While fonts are more subtle, they still provide a strong visual cue to the reader regarding which layer of the narrative they are currently in.

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: Distinguishing between unreliable frame narrator and narrator of framed story I'm writing a work which is bookended by a frame story with an unreliable narrator. How do I prevent confusion for

More posts by @Dunderdale623

: End-of-line hyphenation - how should it be used? End-of-line hyphenation is the process of breaking words between lines to create more consistency across a text block. (source) A long word is

: How to tag distinct options/entities without giving any an implicit priority or suggested order? An example of the problem in an aggravated form surrounds the controversy of France changing â€˜motherâ€™

: Tolkien dealt with exactly the same situation in The Lord of the Rings, starting with the breaking of the Fellowship. For example, we have simultaneously Merry and Pippin being carried by orcs;

: Mortal danger in mid-grade literature In a comment to my post here, Cyn mentions wishing to avoid implying that the characters might all die, because she's writing for a mid-grade audience. Which

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