I keep getting comments on my stories that people say things that don’t make sense or just things that are not true.
And I’m like, yes, yes they do. My characters lie! They lie to your face, they lie behind your back, and they certainly won’t announce they are lying. They are here to fool you. That you think something is not right is just you seeing the edges of the lies shining through. Good work. I am proud of you.
Truth is, I want you to see the lies. And if not that, at least note there is something off.
Take Peter for example. He tells lies every day all day. He feeds different information to different people. Of course he won’t be going around announcing he’s manipulating everybody for his own gain.
And for one book, you will walk in my shoes. You will have to figure things out on your own from context clues that make absolutely no sense to you. You get my squirrely mind that can’t stop for long enough to dissect what’s going on. You get my issues that keep me from trusting my own gut and assessment.
Welcome to my world!
Of course, Peter is still a lying liar who lies. And you figure it out eventually. But until you do, he may not make sense. He lies and neither he nor I will tell you outright that he does so.
Tangent Time.
It’s quite possible this loops back into my neurodiversity. I had to learn context clues the hard way. And if you do it like that, you also learn not to trust them. People are also lying liars who lie. If you learn to reproduce the clues not because it makes sense, but because it is expected, you also learn that anything can be manufactured.
Everything could be a lie! There is no guarantee!
So maybe because I read people and stories differently, because the back of my mind is always open for what I am presented with being a lie, the way I express lying in what feels natural for me, is not natural to others. It makes sense.
Still, welcome to my world.
I hope you enjoy the ride as much as I do.
Mel, this is so insightful! I feel this comes up for me when feedback says “It’s OBVIOUS that X character is lying” but like…maybe it wouldn’t be obvious to everyone. For myself, I have a habit of taking people at face value and missing the details that other people notice as red flags, and I think that tendency shows up in my writing. Experience has taught me to do that less and less, but I still miss the subtext sometimes, or I pick it up and then second guess myself to hell and back. So this really made me go “hm, is this an ND thing?” Definitely food for thought!
The mileage does vary.
Also, second guessing yourself is such a big part of it.
Often you are trained not to believe yourself because lying lairs stick together and they have so much to gain…
Very insightful! People lie all the time, so why wouldn’t characters?
Yes, thank you, exactly!
And the liars don’t want you to know they lie to you because you not knowing is the whole point of it.