Let’s step away from my preachy “Don’t do this!” style blog and put up some more writing tips. Why? Because I’m running out of topics until Kait sends me some more stuff to edit. Which naturally leads to blog entries. There’s nothing more inspiring than field work, right?

Anyway, if you’re as allergic to attribution tags as I am (and really, more people probably should), then today’s rambling is an interesting. For a brief explanation, attribution tags are those little notations written by dialogue to make clear who is talking. It’s all the “he said, she said” stuff. It’s kind of the written version of white noise. People don’t really notice them. And, honestly, one of the first lessons you’ll get as a writer is to cut down on the cutesy uncommon attributions. Most people skim past the little devils, using them to just figure out who is saying what. 

So having Sally constantly shifting moods from exclaimed, to cried, hollered, erupted, bursted, balled, bellowed, purred, whispered, bemoaned, declared, sobbed, whistled, interjected, excused, implied, grunted, chirped, recited and what not can be really distracting. Most times, you’re better off just having “Sally said.” 

Course, my personal preference is to cut those little tags altogether. I strive to have the dialogue carry the speaker’s identity on its own. Course, this can only get you so far and it is certainly a style choice. 

But today we’re going to focus on just one little attribution tag specifically:

Lied.

See, lying in fiction is a bit tricky. Your reader is primed to take you at your word. Since, as the author, your word is kind of final on the matter. Even in real world fiction, what we state as the writer is primed to be set as an absolute truth. As such, getting people to lie is really tricky. 

Naturally, the easiest way to make clear that someone is speaking falsehoods is to just outright state it. This is a clear sentence after all: “I saw a pig fly yesterday,” Tom lied. Granted, it’s kind of plain. And if you have a person habitually lying it can get kind of annoying, as the reader, to constantly see Tom’s statements tagged as such. 

It also takes some of the fun out of dialogue. But if you don’t make clear that a person, how do you communicate that to the reader?

There’s a few tricks you can use. For one, you can make their statements blatantly contradict something that has already occurred. This can clue the reader in that the person speaking isn’t on the up-and-up. This tactic, of course, has some pitfalls. For one, the contradiction with past events may confuse the reader. Or, worse, they may think that information presented earlier was unreliable. 

Another way to catch a person in a contradiction is to have someone point out their law in response to their statements. If Tom claims that he saw pigs flying yesterday but Joseph turns to him and says, “I was with you yesterday and I didn’t see no flying pigs!” then Tom’s going to have some explaining to do. This works well if the lie is part of the action for that scene itself since it brings the tension of a character’s dishonesty to the forefront. 

A different tact is to raise another character’s doubts over the lie later. This can either be after the conversation or when that character discovers something that contradicts the statement. This technique is particularly effective if the lie is to serve some greater mystery. “Strange, Tom claimed to have seen flying pigs yesterday but all the animals at the farm where he works had been slaughtered last week.” This, coupled with reminding the reader of Tom’s prior falsehood, helps to establish doubt in the reader’s mind. 

These techniques, naturally, are useful if you’re writing a mystery since they heighten the sense of intrigue. But mysteries don’t only benefit from delaying a character’s duplicitous nature. Fantasy stories often have a hidden villain who is working against the protagonist while simultaneously pretending to assist them. You can seed the eventual reveal with little moments of incongruency or doubt that reward the attentive but also lay the foundation for the eventual dramatic climax. 

So, when you’re looking to write a character telling a lie, ask yourself:

Have I made clear that this character is not speaking the truth? If not, how am I going to make this clear later?

Does revealing a character’s lie now serve the best dramatic purpose or can this information be slowly undermined and properly revealed at a more emotional moment?

Do I have too many attribution tags? Can my writing be cleaned up by using more ‘said’ in place of other words?