Believe Me!

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

When I sold my first novel, I faced an ethical dilemma that most of us never considered.

I’d been paid before, mind you. Short stories. A poem (I’m a recovered poet.) None of that seemed utterly brazen. But looking at a check for the princely sum of five thousand dollars, my mouth went dry and my throat closed. My hands shook. Looking up at my husband I said, “We have to give it back!” And when he didn’t show any disposition to do so, I tried to explain my idea that this was JUST wrong, “But I made up the whole thing. The whole story. All the words.” “I know,” he said. “They know. They’re counting on it.”

Now I’m more used to the idea of taking money for “just” making up stuff, but I am also aware – since that episode – that this is my real job description. I make up stuff and people pay me.

Well, if they’re going to pay me for lies, I owe it to them to tell the most convincing lie I possibly can.

This means I’m continuously looking for ways that good liars get away with lies. Both in fiction writing and in other situations.

Like most writers, I learn from the most unorthodox sources, and one of the best sources on “how to lie” came from (of all things) a Patricia Wentworth mystery. The main character (Miss Silver) is talking about how they’d all believed the lie because the criminal had been careful to put in stuff everyone knows to be so. (quoted Tennyson on the subject, too “A touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”)

Part of this is that at its most basic what we all share is the experiences of having a body. Those of you who have read me know that I often go to a level of “being in the character” that’s not strictly need. Surely I can say “she had a headache” instead of “her head pounded and throbbed and made it difficult for her to see”. We’ve all had horrible headaches. We can fill in the rest.

Well, sure you can. But you see, if I put in the details and they tally with your experience, something at the back of your mind says “oh, yeah. This is true.” And then you’re more ready to swallow the spaceships and the tentacled aliens. (The first one to mention tentacle porn dies. Also, I have never actually written tentacled aliens.)

That’s how humans work. Hence also starting with things like “It rained, a steady dispiriting rain. Too light for umbrellas, it would nonetheless penetrate clothes and hair and leave you feeling as though soaked in a cold sweat.” Most of us have been in that sort of rain, so that opening paragraph establishes how truthful we are… And then we can pull the wool over your eyes.

Now in the future when you read, look for the tells of the author cozying up to you, just before he sells you the Golden Gate Bridge and some swampland in Florida…

Honest, Mister. Such a deal. Why, just the other day I was telling my mother….

12 thoughts on “Believe Me!”

  1. The other side of the coin, as a reader I find that when an author gets little things wrong it can put me off the whole rest of the book. There’s a book in a mystery series that I really like and when one of the characters referred to the NYC borough of Bronx instead of The Bronx, it really affected my enjoyment of the whole rest of the book and in the series. After all, if the author doesn’t sweat the little things, how can I trust her on the big things–like tentacled aliens, or how it feels to shapeshift, when I know they didn’t sweat the details which I do know. It’s also why I wouldn’t read fiction with lots of computer or psychological content (and likely missed out on some good stuff) because I knew that if they got technical things wrong or just off kilter in areas where I have some expertise it would ruin the entire experience for me.

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    1. Actually what we’re told is that if we’re going to get anything wrong geographically DON’T do it in NYC — a high proportion of the people who’ll promote/push the book know NYC by heart.
      OTOH something like that, I’d say give the writer the benefit of the doubt — some of my historical books are full of that sort of errors (like in Kathryn Howard’s story — “though” for “thou” — because some editor “helped” me after the page proof stage. Erasing a “the” is that sort of thing. Now, if the entire plot HINGES on an eleventh century housemaid buying a SKY BLUE blanket, at the local fair, on a WHIM, then the book goes against the wall. HARD.

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  2. I ran into a piece you wrote for PJ Media and followed the links back to your website. I’m a soon-to-be e-published writer that hasn’t quit my day job. I enjoyed the post about creative lying. I’m trying my hardest, honest!

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    1. well, go back through my posts — I’ve been doing a lot about writing. Also check out http://madgeniusclub.blogspot.com and go back through the posts. I’ve promissed we’ll compile an how to write ebook from our posts, but none of us has had time to do it. Also, if you haven’t yet, buy Dwight Swain and read it. It’s very basic, but I find every author has holes in the basic structure because there are no real courses or curriculums for our kind…
      As for trying … all my friends tell me I’m trying… I’m very, very trying.

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  3. Speaking of tentacled aliens…

    I was invited to Japan for a lecture tour. I cashed in all of my frequent flyer miles and took my wife along, thinking she’d enjoy the trip to an exotic land. Unfortunately, she has never been a fan of exotic food. But *surely* a *salad* was safe, right? Wrong. The salad was served, complete with “field greens” (i.e. weeds) and a nice juicy (not) octopus tentacle. There it lay, poor emissary from Delta Pavonis, victim of a malfunctioning Universal Translator which turned “Take me to your leader” into “Take me to your eatery.”

    As for me, I had the tempura. The octopus was a bit chewy, but the shrimp were heavenly.

    So, what were you saying about Tentacle ‘n’ Prawns?

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      1. Any country which is oceanside and relies upon fishing for protein will eat octopus. There are limited ways to prepare octopus. Cultural similarity follows from geographical (geological?) similarity.

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  4. We hardly ever had octopus to eat on the high plains of west texas back in the fifties and sixties.

    Imagine the shock when I first had it for lunch in Crete in the seventies. Shortly there after I’d go hunt it myself. Chicken Fried Octopus ain’t half bad. Everyone gets a drumstick.

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  6. I love this post! Thank you for sharing.

    For anyone who’s interested, the story of how Victor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower is actually quite fascinating. His marks really weren’t as gullible as one might think. He was just very good, and he built on the believable possibility that the city wanted to get rid of that old, run-down exhibition piece before it turned into an eyesore.

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