How to convey best that my character is lying?

I have a story that’s written in the villain’s pov.

My question is, would my readers know that she’s lying?
If they don’t realize that at the time of the lie, then they’d learn a few scenes later when the truth comes out, but that could become confusing.

The lie is a story she made up for her daughter to explain how she lost her powers. She’s hiding what really happened but sprinkling in some truth so it sounds almost real.

By the time the lie is told, the readers would know:

  • a group of gods, including her son, ganged up on her and stole her divinity. They’re called by their names several times throughout the story as she keeps longing for revenge. This is the first scene in the book.
  • It hasn’t been mentioned yet why they did this.
  • While she was a goddess, she’s met a couple of wizards whom she gave a magic crystal to in exchange for a very special pebble. This is only mentioned, it’s not a scene.

Then comes the detailed story she tells her daughter in which her powers were stolen by a group of wizards.

She doesn’t mention the names of the gods at all in that story.

Is that enough for the readers to realize that she’s lying?

I think it would be best if readers know this because then they would feel dread for the girl - she thinks she’s doing the right thing, she has no idea that she fell for the lie and is being used.

I want to avoid being obvious in the scene she tells the lie because it would ruin the effect - she’s putting up a good act as she tells the story, crying, being upset, etc. The only obvious moment comes at the end when she hugs the girl and smiles to herself, thinking, ‘It was easier than I thought.’

Or would I have to write out the actual scene with the wizards - what really happened? It would have to be a flashback. I don’t know, I’m not loving that idea.

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  1. Look up behavioral tics of liars. Those who know the look of a liar will get it.

  2. If the kid is old enough to be disillusioned, use their skepticism. “Is this another of your fairy tales, mama?” You can do EVERYTHING to mek it look true, and use the child questioning it to make the reader doubt without fully giving the game away. Convincing the girl can be done as well as you want, from there on.

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Whose POV you are telling it from? You said it from the villain, so she knows she is lying.

One of the books I love (actually, the same author does it twice) has the flashback thing, but he doesn’t do it until the very end. That reveal is very effective tying in everything. I think the smile you show is a good tell.

Behavioral tics are interesting but I worry if it would be overdone - this is written from the liar’s pov. Would she notice her own tics?

Thoughts of “don’t look away, be earnest”. Shrugs.

Or a mirror just over the daughter’s shoulder.

It is from the villain’s pov.

I’d rather avoid being that obvious as I think it will cheapen the effect.

Before that scene - yes, I can add some intentions. Currently, I have a whole bunch of thoughts written out as she’s planning but I think I’ll cut most of that out. Maybe I’ll only leave in the part where she worries if she can trust her daughter - this is basically the reason for the made up story. She wants to ensure that the daughter feels sorry for her. Poor girl thinks she’s exacting justice for what was done to her mother.

Ideally, the effect I want to create is that the reader will be reading the book and feeling appalled at everything the villain does, and this scene comes along, and the reader will think, Oh, she’s finally nice to her daughter. Maybe she’s not so bad after all. But then as she continues telling the story, the reader should start wondering, Hey, this doesn’t sound like the scene I read (the first scene in the book). What’s going on?

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I think it’s a familiar situation, we had seen it in life, when people put a spin on things, so people would be suspicious

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Yeah.

I guess my concern is if the readers will pick up on the lie when the biggest clue is that she doesn’t mention the names of the people she wants revenge against.

Not sure what other clues I can drop.

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That’s certainly a better place.

You could also add in a puzzled look to the kid when things don’t make sense to them, inst ad of her emotions.

Oh, no. The kid doesn’t know that things don’t make sense. She needs to buy it all.

I only want the audience to question it.

Hrmm…that’s all the easy answers.

Gloating?

Ok, thought about it for the whole drive. Subtle, too innocent to catch on…

After the daughter agrees: “So innocent. You do not understand the amount of sacrifice this will take…”

Simple, would set off warnings for those who are paying attention, foreshadows the redemption over something not yet understood.

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That approach might work.

Have you already established her as an unreliable narrator? then the reader will be able to tell that they are lying through subtext. Or have you established a scene earlier where she lies, so it shows the reader that she is capable of it? Then you can just naturally have her lie because its already established as part of her character. If she’s not already a liar, then I like the suggestion to look up ticks.

I think by this point of the story the reader should have figured out that she’s an unreliable narrator because she consistently avoids thinking about what happened prior to her losing her powers. At least I hope that the readers would wonder about that.

And that’s my concern, I guess. Because if the readers don’t pick up on it, if they don’t suspect or wonder, then when they hear the lie, they might take it at face value.

I don’t know. Am I overthinking it? If the readers fall for her lie, then they’d find out the truth later. Will it be disappointing when they realize they fell for her act just like her daughter did?

And the bigger loss would be in the lost suspense that they’d feel if they did figure it out ahead of time. And the subsequent triumph of “I knew it!” It’s very satisfying when you figure out the puzzle before the characters do.

I like this idea, but I’m not sure where earlier in the story I can insert a lie. So far, she’s been pretty truthful, even when being deceitful. She’s lied only by avoiding the truth and not even very consciously because as a narcissist, she’s quite oblivious to her own faults. It’s much easier to think that your misfortune was caused by injustice than accepting that it was a well deserved punishment.

Hmmm, unless the scene where she’s deceitful could serve as the establishment of her lying skills?

The scene I’m thinking about is earlier with another child. The function of the scene is to show how she treats her children with the implication that she’s done this dozens of times over the centuries.
She trains this little girl and it’s not going well, the girl’s struggling and crying. So our villain smiles to the girl. “I have an idea. Let’s do something together. Would you like to go outside?”
And she takes the girl for a walk far away to a human village, tells her to play with the kids at the playground, and leaves her there. :cry:

What lie can I add to it? Or does it work as is?

It sounds like you know what you’re doing, but won’t really know until you receive feedback on the scene and see how the ‘lie’ is coming across. This is a really good video on how unreliable narrators work and how to weave deception into the narrative without the things you’re concerned about: losing the reader, making the character seem inconsistent, etc.

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To build on what I said with the sacrifice thing: you write her words straight as you would have the truth told, then you pick up the thesaurus and wrangle with replacing words with synonym and near-synonyms with words that have a more sinister tone. Sacrifice is already naturally that kind of word, so I don’t think that would go darker.

A hamfisted way of showing how that works: it was done so a 5 year old could kind of believe and doubt at the same time.

In real life,

we had a friend who went to jail for inappropriate pictures…at a group gathering, he said something that a lot of older folks say in our culture, while holding someone’s kid: “I could so get into trouble if I bring you home.”

Normal implication is that your friend’s kid is so cute you want to steal them.

Years later, looking at that moment, poor mama feels like someone walked over her grave.

It’s an option.

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