Don't Tell the Truth -- The Key to Intriguing Stories

For our next roundtable, let's talk about the importance of lying to your readers. No, no you as a writer, but your characters lying. 

Perhaps the easiest genre to realize that some of your characters (or maybe all) need to be untruthful is the mystery genre, whether hard-boiled, cozy, procedural, urban fantasy, whatever. All genres, however, can benefit from dishonest characters, from Victorian adventure (think about Dicken's characters) to romantic leads the reader is supposed to root for? Why are dishonest characters so necessary?

Raymond Embrack: I am liking making the hero a liar to add imperfections. And when he is caught in a lie he goes "Clearly I lied. Bullshit is a tool for experts."

Marian Allen: Dishonest characters add another obstacle to the characters' journey through the story arc and another source of conflict/tension. The most intense way to handle this is to have the reader know something another character doesn't know. Prime example: in Breaking Bad, when Walt skirts around telling Jesse about Jane. The viewer is in agony, yelling at the screen, "Don't! Don't tell!"

Gordon Dymowski: Dishonest characters provide great complications to a story. Regardless of genre, having someone either hold the cards close to their chest and/or being outright deceptive provides a greater opportunity for storytelling. If every character in a story were completely honest, most stories would simply be laundry lists of events. Dishonesty provides for richer storytelling and greater potential for building atmosphere.

Sean Taylor: For me, dishonest characters are a must, as everyone my MCs encounter is out for something and they tend to keep that something close to the vest, as the saying goes. Nobody dishes out all the info in a first pass, and that's what keeps my protagonists having to search for what's really happening in the story. Anything less would be boring for the reader. 

John French: In the first story in one of my first books (Past Sins) the CSI narrator is told "Everyone lies). Even the one character who does not lie manages to shade things by telling literal truths. The thing is, to me at least, that it is important that the writers not lie to their readers. They can omit, they can distract, but they can't tell them and out and out lie. And therein lies the writing.

What are some efficient and effective ways to work dishonesty into the mouths of your characters, both those readers aren't supposed to like and those they are supposed to really love? 

Gordon Dymowski: One way of establishing a character's dishonesty is by establishing inconsistencies between what they say and what happens - in Columbo, the title character never breaks the case with an insight; it's by pointing out the inconsistencies with a slightly annoying sense of detail. (Or the "just one more thing" factor). Another is through showing how distorted a character's thinking has become - many of Jim Thompson's novels (like THE KILLER INSIDE ME or SAVAGE NIGHT) provide both the lead character's perspective as well as how that perspective may be slightly skewed in the wrong direction.

Marian Allen: If you tell your story in third person, you can show characters experience things, then let them lie or omit important things. If it's first person, you can give them a "tell" that lets your point-of-view character know they're being dishonest, or have what they say contradict what somebody else says. There's also the case of characters who leave things out because they don't think it's important or assume somebody else has told or that the person they're talking to already knows. (House: "Everybody lies.")

Sean Taylor: Having little things change in the repeating of a story or subtle details be different from person to person. That's a trick I learned from Ed McBain's 87th Precinct books. It's not the big lies that usually get people caught. It's the little ones that they can't keep all the moving parts straight about. 

The reverse downside to dishonest characters being suddenly found out or admitting their lies can be that the reader feels cheated (particularly in a mystery). The more natural it fits the character, the better. What are some tidbits you're learned to keep readers from feeling cheated at a sudden discovery or lie found out?

Marian Allen: You have to lay the groundwork. You have to let the reader know the situation and characters so well that, when a revelation comes, the reader goes, "WHAT? WHAT? ...Oh, of COURSE A would lie about that to B!" Or, "Naturally, she was lying. She couldn't tell the truth if you paid her to."

Gordon Dymowski: Shading a lie with some elements of truth can help ease the reader into accepting that a character has been dishonest. Avoiding the cliches of the "big reveal" (Non-spoiler: read THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD for an example of how *not* to do this) can make accepting the truth easier. In my novella "A Town Called Malice" for MASKED RIDER VOL. 3, I hid the 'big reveal" beneath layers of duplicity, as well as by focusing on an "obvious" antagonist to hamper the story. (Both the obvious and 'real' antagonists were dishonest; one just served as a kind of MacGuffin)

John French: (To paraphrase) There are lies. There are damned lies. And there is misdirection. In fiction, just as in real life, people lie., especially in mystery fiction. Suspects lie to the police, police lie to suspects, etc. I think the key is to let the reader know when someone MIGHT be lying. 

Sean Taylor: Like I said earlier, drop in enough hints through either characterization (i.e., you expect this lout to lie simply because he's a lout) or through subtle details changing in a character's story. Of course, you can always flip this too and have the lout be completely honest against type. 

Emily Leverett: I think readers have to know the lie was spottable. I mean, it can't just be "and then this totally surprising thing is revealed, that there was no way to even guess at happening!" That leaves us feeling cheated. I think one of the best examples is still the Sixth Sense. You're given everything you need to know--even told straight up--what's going on, and most people (me included) are good little movie watchers, and fill in all the blanks, but we fill them in incorrectly, because the film knows how most folks watch movies, and holds that against them. The main character isn't quite lying--except in the sense that he's lying to himself and refusing to acknowledge that he's dead. There are SO MANY chances for the audience to figure it out.