Very good post at Conversational Reading wherein Scott tackles the fine points of unreliable first person narrator and focuses on the grammatical skill of the teller of story.
I’ve come up against this many times in my own writing–both questions: unreliability and grammar use–just recently in a short bio as well as in both of my latest short stories. In Walking Away, the first person narrator is someone with whom the reader may empathize until some little details come out that subtly hint at a personality he attempts to hide beneath condescension and controlled behavior. In A Phone Call Away, there are some of the finest examples of run-on sentences ever written, though the story is in the intimate second person pov.
It’s fun to experiment, and only skill can overcome the presence of a poorly structured sentence. And only practice can lead to proficiency of breaking grammar rules. Personally, I practice breaking rules as often as I can.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology