On Lying to the Reader

[Sars2k8]

Its hard to explain but good blog i liekd it

[borderline_mary]

I say go for it, but don't overdo it. Tossing in so many twists can be irritating and make the reader dislike the story on principal, as well as being predictable in a backhanded way (sometimes you just know there's another twist coming because that's the way the story's been going, and you're waiting for the other shoe to drop any minute; that's why people mock M. Night Shyamalan). That's not to say there might not be some overarching, plot-important reason for the Sonya-doppelganger's appearance, but it really depends on how important it is and what it does to the plot and the characters at the end. If it's just in there for shock value or as a plot device that could have been replaced by something simpler, odds are it'll just piss the reader off.

However, the Mad-Eye Moody example is an excellent illustration of how lying to the reader can be neatly pulled off without really being lying. You're the writer, and therefore omniscient, but you're working through the characters; if you're working with third-person exclusive perspective as most stories do, and the character in question perceives this doppelganger as the real Sonya, then even in narration outside of speech/thought process it's appropriate to call her (it?) Sonya. If a different character to whose perspective you later switch is suspicious that this isn't really Sonya, then have the narration refer to her as 'the girl' or even ' "Sonya" '. You're not really lying per se -- you're accepting that the story is told through the medium of the characters, and therefore the characters' opinions and beliefs will color the narrative even when they're not directly thinking or speaking. You've got a perspective, so it doesn't make sense to venture outside of that perspective to include something the characters don't know.

Now, if you've decided to do the entire thing in third-person omniscient, where you have no perspective except your own as the writer, then all that goes out the window. That, however, is why I dislike that style of writing and avoid it like the plague in my own work.

[The Pen Of Doom]

I would carefully phrase things in the 'law speak' or whatever if its just a single instance. But if you have to dissemble with the reader, as in name a character one name but actually have it be another character...thats fine.

And even if you flat out lie its ok too. I've done it a couple times.

i.e. "She parried the blow. Well, almost. It severed her arm." Something like that. Totally mess with the reader. Sometimes they like that. Sometimes it just pisses them off. Either way its clever.

I think the best answer would be a combination of flat out lies and 'dancing' around the subject.

(I.e. Jim saw what he thought was Joe. "Hello," said Joe.) In that case you never REALLY said it was Joe. But you have to give them an idea of who is talking no?

Hope that helped some.

[MoonFlight]

I try and write as things would occur in real life as much as possible.
So say you had a real life experience where you knew someone and thought they hated you due to you have preconceptions of a person like them before being horrid to you (aka the person is a teacher and you dislike them due to being wc and treated like you were stupid and a waste of space). At first you would have some quandries about believing them to be horrid as well...after all they are just another person.
Then the person is rude to you and as each little thing you notice builds up your realise you were right and the person is a horrible person.

However then your friends tell you the truth behind what was happening and you come to realise yourself, the person didn't mean to be rude and you were being defensive due to your preconceptions. Sadly though as you twisted their words after the initial rudeness the two ideas meshed. The person isn't horrible but because you were being so rude back they started to get irritated and tried to defend themselves.

It only really works in first person, I'm sure it can be done in third person but I'm not brave enough to try it and anyone who is gets a standing ovation from me.

Generally based on the real life example of a twist in your life the way to write it is cryptic. If it's your character viewpoint that gets twisted in the end then build up that character and make your readers trust their judgement. If it's a twist in a plotpoint, such as the Sonya example, I would write it as Mark being utterly convincing in his pain and loss so you feel the fact she's gone but then she comes back and we are as shocked as Mark. If it's a hidden secret, such as Sonya coming back actually not being the actual Sonya Mark remembers, I would write it with greyness- as in hmm it looks like Sonya- it must be but she's acting differently, prehaps in her abscence she has changed or maybe she is angry with me- just a lot of conflicting thoughts in Mark's head so there are so many options for the readers to think about and it is realistic.

I don't really mind about lying in writing, such as saying Bob was talking to Mandy but then you find out it wasn't actually Bob speaking. As far as the reader knows it is Bob and its not actual lying- its just the way they identify him and in real life the reader would identify him as Bob if they didn't know any better either so I think it's OK.

[Firlodge]

`Quetzalcoatl

Of course it's all right to lie in a fictional book. Your readers aren't going to sue you for messing with their minds. If you were writing a biography or something serious, no it wouldn't be okay to just randomly type "The Civil War was 100% caused by General Sherman masquerading in a pink tutu through Washington, D.C." But it's different for fiction. The readers are helplessly grasping for an understanding of a story they like, and then when some piece of that twists and crumbles beneath them, they'll automatically be like "OH WHAT THE FUUUUUCK" and probably continue reading.

Of course, you have to be careful with what you twist. It can all go to Hell very easily if you kill off a character and then the whole story turns into a rant, or maybe just stupidly drops off into an abyss. Resolve is key, though you don't have to completely fill in all the holes in a book to have success.

Are you suggesting that in fiction, it would be ok to randomly type "The Civil War was 100% caused by General Sherman masquerading in a pink tutu through Washington, D.C.", hmmm?


I only ask because it seems like that to me.

[doubtingdennis]

The Pen Of Doom

i.e. "She parried the blow. Well, almost. It severed her arm."

Sounds like my kinda narrator cool

Really, as long as you're not a total a** about it ("Sonya's dead! NO I WAS JUST MESSIN' WITH YOU 'CUZ I FELT LIKE IT HAH" wink I'm totally 100% fine with lying. The vast majority of books are based at least a little bit on the character's perceptions of things, so if they have even the slightest reason to believe it's actually Sonya then the narrator has no responsibility to stick to the real truth.

[Feyre]

As long as you don't make it too much like a soap and don't over dramatize things. I also think that it should be an intellectual step, not just a random change. Something that has clues that it will happen in the earlier stages of the story.

[Workplace Boredom]

Make the reader focus on a red herring.

I only lie in my stories if they are in a strictly single point of view.

[iBat]

Okay, I think some other things need to be addressed here, too, and I think they've been touched on without actually being talked about.

The most effective way of lying to the reader is through a naive narrator. A first person narrator with a strange and distorted view of life is a really effective way of lying. Naive narrators can be extremely powerful.

The best example I can think about off the top of my head is H.H. from Lolita by Nabovkov. H.H. is an extremely intelligent man dictating the whole book, but you can't quite take anything he says as entirely "true." Another example which comes to me from the top of my head is Nick Carraway from The Great Gatsby. He only tells half-truths the whole book, but the reader can't quite tell what is true and what is not true. With Nick, especially, the naivity is less lying and more just information told in a biased light.

Naive narrators can also be pulled off by using children as narrators. Children only understand events in a limited perspective. Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird is a great example of a character who tells the truth as she sees the truth, without really telling the truth. (Like when she says Atticus is a "detached" father, when the reader can tell he is heavily invested in his children's lives. ) Like in To Kill a Mockingbird, children telling stories in retrospect as adults can still be naive, because they tell the story through the eyes of themselves as a child.

I hope I'm making sense, because I'm going to continue, and my thoughts feel illy composed.

Naive narrators can also be expressed through a limited third person P.O.V, although that's a WHOLE lot harder to do. Obviously, if the P.O.V is limited, then the single character's thoughts are exposed, and thus, the narration can still be naive. Umm--the only example I can think of off the top of my head is Glasgow's The Sheltered Life, and I only remember that because I just read it. (I finished it like--two weeks ago.)

Anyway, I think a Naive narrator is the only way to successfully pull off lying to the reader, and that's only because the P.O.V is limited to a character who might be lying to him/herself or others.

Yeeaaaah.

[Axiluvia]

I'd have it based on both characters perceptions and not giving them the full information.

For example, if, while on a quest, the Typical Hero hears from Random Peasant that Evil Villaness is tormenting helpless villagers, he's going to go to the rescue, and quite possibly kill her Worthless Minions.

You present it to the reader like that, and they may accept it.

Then, with either a flashback, or a flash-forward/cut, you can show that the Evil Villaness is actually Wronged Semi-Heroine out for Revenge, and Random Peasant is actually Evil b*****d trying to get Typical Hero to do his work for him, so he kills Worthless Minions, who are actually, Good Friends of Wronged Semi-Heroine, who now sees Typical Hero as Cocksure Jerk Evil Guy.

Going back and forth *between* different perspectives can be really fun to write, give interesting twists, and still keep the reader interested.

Hope this helps!

[Reinna Astarel]

I think it's best to lie from a character's point, or from a narrator that has a set personality/bias etc., rather than the dry, omniscient third narrator. Then it's just.. I don't know, annoying? Sometimes it gives the impression that the author doesn't have a clue, and is forced to resort to rearranging the laws of the universe to make a resolution- other times, it gives an impression of "HA, I TRICKED YOU!!" At the very least, it sort of breaks the sense of ''third person narration'' you get.

I personally like having characters lie outright to others, and other than very vague hinting at the deception, having other characters just follow that until the truth is revealed. Then again, maybe this is because I have a character that lies a lot to the people in her group.

[Axiluvia]

Reinna Astarel

I think it's best to lie from a character's point, or from a narrator that has a set personality/bias etc., rather than the dry, omniscient third narrator. Then it's just.. I don't know, annoying? Sometimes it gives the impression that the author doesn't have a clue, and is forced to resort to rearranging the laws of the universe to make a resolution- other times, it gives an impression of "HA, I TRICKED YOU!!" At the very least, it sort of breaks the sense of ''third person narration'' you get.

I personally like having characters lie outright to others, and other than very vague hinting at the deception, having other characters just follow that until the truth is revealed. Then again, maybe this is because I have a character that lies a lot to the people in her group.

That's true, if you're doing third person narrative, it's not like you can make the narrator surprised, unless you're not doing the omniscient view (which tends to be almost all of 3rd person views I've seen). It's not like you can have someone talk about what's happened in the past, and can see anything, and then go "Oh, wow. I'm surprised as you are. No really!"

If you do a third person camera view, like a movie, then you *might* be able to pull it off, but I haven't seen it done in a novel just yet.

[Gemini the Spy]

The narrator of the story, even if it's a character, is supposed to know the story, forwards and backwards, every twist and turn and pothole. To have the narrator do the lying, in my opinion, is wrong. It's probably just going to piss off readers. I know it would get on my nerves because while I'm reading, I try to figure out what's going to happen next based on what the author has told me before, and I expect what they say to be truthful. Technicalities such as, "He will one day be killed by her youngest cousin, but technically she has two little younger cousins" is okay by me. The author can lead the reader into thinking that without a doubt one of the cousins will be the murderer, when it actually turns out to be the other, or anything to that aspect, especially more complicated scenarios. (That was just a quick one I made up off the top of my head so I know it sounds stupid.) But saying directly that a character is dead and then having him not be dead? I just don't like that. The only way I approve of lying to the reader is through the dialogue of other characters, even the narrator if it's something he said at one point during the story, but not during the narration.

Hope that makes sense.

War and Peace,

-Gemini

[IGRADUS]

The only real problem with lying to your readers is that it destroys your credibility as a storyteller. They have to trust in your absolute word, or the gaps in between your words, to get anything out of a story. When you lie it hurts them for trusting you.
Plus I think it's just rather sloppy writing.

[Reinna Astarel]

IGRADUS

The only real problem with lying to your readers is that it destroys your credibility as a storyteller. They have to trust in your absolute word, or the gaps in between your words, to get anything out of a story. When you lie it hurts them for trusting you.
Plus I think it's just rather sloppy writing.

Not really. How do you do plot twists without some form of lying to the reader? If you portray Mr. Smith as a kindly old man who gives out sweets to children, and as the likeable neighbor all your main characters like, does it "totally destroy your credibility as a storyteller" if you make the reader find out that he's actually a killer responsible for a string of serial killers around the area? Or could it work as a good plot twist?

Similarly, as someone has already provided this example, and I think it's a fair good one- did it hurt the readers' trust in J.K. Rowling when, in her fourth book Goblet of Fire, we find out that Moody's actually Crouch, and a bad guy all along? I doubt it.