Liars

Aubrie L. Nixon 3 Comments

Guest Post by Aubrie L. Nixon

This month’s topic speaks to my dark soul! Liars. As a writer and published author my job is to lie. I get paid to do it. I am pretty darn good at it if I do say so myself. Creating characters that lie, manipulate, cheat and steal is my specialty. However, I am not into that whole I am only one thing type of character. Because even people who lie aren’t just “liars” they are also human beings with likes, dislikes, motivations, and emotions. Creating a character that can lie and still be a good person is always fun. In my current series The Age of Endings I don’t think I have one character that is 100% truthful. The whole premise of this series is that “No one is innocent.”

It has been so much fun to come up with such a dark story where literally no one and nothing is as it seems. I am not a huge fan of heroes and heroines always being so black and white, it’s just not realistic. I love stories where people have a dark side. And I LOVE exploring the darker side of human nature. Let’s take my main character Aerona for instance, she is a cold blooded assassin. But she also loves fancy parties, food and sex. She has people in her life who she loves and people who she dislikes greatly. She literally loves blood and murder. She absolutely loves bring the one to do it. Yet, she has this softer side where she cares about people who are less fortunate. She is complex, dark, beautiful and vulnerable. If you didn’t know better though you would just see a killer. Like I stated above I LOVE stories where no one is as they seem.

I try my best to create characters who are as human and flawed as possible. Those are the kind of character that I relate to, and I think a lot of readers do too. None of us are perfect, so why would characters in a book be perfect? I certainly hope Aerona and the other characters in Secret of Souls are relatable.

My favorite character (at the moment) is Daegan. He is broody, dark, mysterious and overall a compete ass hole. I feel like Daegan is my most reliable character because while he doesn’t reveal every truth, he almost never lies. He is reliable and in my opinion the easiest “narrator” because for the most part he is straight forward and honest. He was a blast to write because I knew he backstory and why he is such a meanie. Daegan is so broody and I freaking love broody. Writing him was so easy because I feel like out if all of the character in this series he and I are the most similar.

In life, I try as hard as I can not to be untruthful. I find lying unacceptable (except for my writing) and as much fun as it is to write dishonest characters and read about them it’s not as fun in real life. I try to remember that when I write liars. Especially when the lie can ruin a relationship or can potentially lead to harm or death. I guess what I am trying to say is that liars are easy and fun to write. The people they lie to and who are effected by their lies are much harder to write.

It’s hard for me to write from the perspective of someone who has been lied to. It’s difficult of find that raw emotion of betrayal that comes with some lies. There are a few lies in this particular series that are life altering. When the truth comes out (and it ALWAYS does) the consequences are monumental. That is the not so fun part, having a character face those consequences. It can often be the end of a characters relationship, which I find heartbreaking. It also forces characters to potentially change their ways. I say potentially because they don’t always change. It is always interesting to me to see where characters that are deemed “dark, liar, broody etc.”  go. Or if they change at all.

What are some of your favorite characters? Are there any “liars” that you love? Or do you only love the truthful type? Do you think there is ever a time where lying is acceptable? Why or why not.

-Aubrie

aubreyAubrie is 24 years young. She plays mom to a cutest demon topside, and is married to the hottest man in the Air Force. When she isn’t writing she is daydreaming about hot brooding anti-heroes and sassy heroines. She loves Dragon Age, rewatching Game of Thrones and reading all things fantasy. She runs a local YA/NA bookclub with 3 chapters, and over 200 members. Her favorite thing to do is eat, and her thighs thank her graciously for it. If she could have dinner with anyone living or dead it would be Alan Rickman because his voice is the sexiest sound on earth. He could read the dictionary and she would be enthralled. Her current mission in life is to collect creepy taxidermy animals because she finds them cute and hilarious. She resides just outside of Washington DC.

It All Started with a Typo

Gregory D. Little Horror Narrative Voice 2 Comments

Anyone who spends enough time talking to me about books knows that the books that really blow me away are those that show me something I’ve never seen before. They tend to be a little (or a lot) weird and while they often enjoy a cult following, their oddness keeps them away from mainstream success.

I can’t remember what convinced me to pick up The Grin of Dark, by Ramsey Campbell, but it quickly wormed its way into my consciousness. The book centers on Simon, a disgraced film critic determined to win back his pride–and, he hopes, the approval of his girlfriend’s parents–by writing a critically successful biography of Tubby Thackeray, the world’s greatest comedian during the silent film era, now relegated to barely a footnote.

It doesn’t sound like much, right? But though it may not sound like it from the description above, this book is a deeply unsettling work of horror.  In his quest to uncover Tubby Thackeray’s history (did I mention Tubby was a clown?), he discovers fragmented accounts of people literally laughing themselves to death at his live performances. Bits of film Simon watches leave him deeply disturbed. It becomes apparent to the reader, if not to Simon, that Tubby’s history has been erased for a reason.

In his research online, Simon runs afoul of a troll whose typo-ridden posts challenge every point he tries to make (about ten years old now, the book’s use of the internet is dated in some ways but still perfectly relevant in others). As he pours himself deeper into his research, Simon begins experiencing strange sounds and sensations. He begins misspeaking words, sometimes the same words that his troll-nemesis does in his antagonistic posts online. He garbles sentences in ways that will maximally offend those he is speaking to, even his closest loved ones. It’s as if some force or entity is gaslighting him, scrambling his perceptions while convincing him that things he was previously sure of never happened. It’s all deeply creepy,  and that’s before the typos begin appearing in the narration of the book themselves.

It happens slowly at first, so slowly that I assumed the first few were honest mistakes that slipped through editing. Regrettable, but it happens. Yet as Simon’s paranoia mounts and his behavior grows more erratic, mistakes trickle into the narration with greater frequency. Every face Simon glimpses in the street is suddenly hostile, every comment pregnant with hidden animosity. He is persecuted from every side, the whole world out to get him. Simon is being driven insane by a darkly comedic force of great malice–or maybe by his own crippling sense of inadequacy–and the book makes the reader feel that shattering of reality with disquieting power.

As Simon’s life unravels around him, the world makes less and less sense. He can’t believe anything he sees or hears. This is a book that will stick with you long after you read it. And now I’ll recount a little anecdote to you. I pulled the book down off my shelf to reference in writing this post. I went to look up some of the typos I wrote about above, hoping to quote a few to show you what I meant.

I couldn’t find any for the longest time. Despite having read the book twice, I was genuinely starting to wonder if I’d imagined them, so much so that it was a huge relief when I finally did find one. I’m… going to put the book back on the shelf now.

About the Author: Gregory D. LittleheadshotRocket scientist by day, fantasy and science fiction author by night, Gregory D. Little began his writing career in high school when he and his friend wrote Star Wars fanfic before it was cool, passing a notebook around between (all right, during) classes. His first novel, Unwilling Souls, is available now from ebook retailers and trade paperback through Amazon.com. His short fiction can be found in The Colored Lens, A Game of Horns: A Red Unicorn Anthology, and Dragon Writers: An Anthology. He lives in Virginia with his wife and their yellow lab.

You can reach him at his website (www.gregorydlittle.com), his Twitter handle (@litgreg) or at his Author Page on Facebook.

 

Two Great Examples of How to Lie

Ace Jordyn Character Craft & Skills 1 Comment

Lying well is a great art – a con artist will agree, but so will the great writers. It is a much used device and character trait and if done well, the reader is drawn into the drama. Lying has many uses: to further the plot, to plant clues, create mystery and tension in a cat and mouse game of truth finding, to introduce information without being forthright about it, to pace the story and timing of reveals, to change direction in the plot, and to misdirect readers to increase the shock and thrill of a reveal.

All these uses make the lie a very powerful, multi-purpose tool.

Lying is more than the art of misdirection, although in a good mystery there’ll be plenty of red herrings and misdirection which increases the thrill of the reveals. Lying is about the relationships characters have with each other and with themselves. Who lies to whom?

In its simplest form, a character can either lie to herself or to someone else. Whether it’s about a personal flaw, a false belief which forms her worldview, or a moral justification which conflicts with an authority such as the law, a religious or ethical code, or it may be avoidance to face the consequences of a truth.

The art of a good lie is that the reader will begin to believe those lies, despite clues to the contrary. This increases the shock value of reveals. That’s what makes the cat and mouse game of truth versus lie so scintillating.

The danger of the lie is that it can alienate the reader. If your protagonist lies to characters, it had better be for a good reason because it will affect how your reader feels about the character. Every protagonist has a moral code and readers expect her to act within that code. The code may include lying all the time or only in certain circumstances such as to protect others or oneself, for personal gain, to hurt, to entrap, to avoid a truth. Depending on how this is done, reader emotion can range from sympathy to horror, and your protagonist can be seen as either heroic or villainous. We all lie, even our favorite heroes do, that’s part of what makes each of us human and our characters relatable. So, lying must be part of the writer’s toolkit.

Recently, I read two books which employed lies in very different ways. Both authors intrigued me with their choices and their consistent, believable execution of the lie. In both stories, lying was central to how each mystery was created and solved. However, the lies weren’t merely fibbing or speaking a falsehood, although that played into the dramas as well. In Death by a Honey Bee by Abigail Keam, most lies were justified because of a moral and ethical code which doesn’t fully conform to law enforcement’s rules which means adjusting the truth and meeting out justice from the amateur sleuth’s personal moral code. In The Couple Next Door, Shari Lapena primarily used omission, the withholding of information, by each character.

Thes two ways of using lies in these novels couldn’t have been more different, but the effect was the same – a mystery was created, a puzzle needed to be solved and the sleuth (one a detective and the other an amateur) had to uncover the truth. Keam’s use of the lie, however, created a cat and mouse game filled with red herrings. Josiah Reynolds, a middle aged beekeeper has her own brand of lying and justice based on her personal Southern Kentucky code of justice. She lies to the police, lies to herself, and lies to others. Despite the lies the protagonist tells, or perhaps because of them, Keam manages to create a believable and likeable protagonist. Josiah’s lies to others sometimes comes in the form of pranks, like when she lies about her young and gay lawyer friend Matt being her lover.

By contrast, Lapina’s characters, except for the detective, withheld major information which was slowly meted out to create a suspenseful novel which was hard to put down. Her trick, I think, was not to let the reader know immediately what information was withheld, or who was lying about what and only to use the reveals to move the plot forward. She used other forms of lying such as omission, secrets, lying to the police, lying to oneself. Lying to oneself was one of the most cunning devices, however. Without spoiling the plot, the mother, Anna suffers from post partum depression and her needing to face some hard facts about herself, lying to herself and to others about her condition, is excruciating and the tension builds as we want to know what really happened.

In this novel, everyone is hiding something, and no one is telling until and only if they absolutely have to. Masterfully done- a setting of every parent’s nightmare, a child has been kidnapped from Anna and Marco’s home while they were next door at the neighbour’s for a dinner party. Anna and Marco love their little girl and the torture of her being gone, of time passing and her not being found are excruciating. Detective Rasbach pulls out their secrets, one by one and slowly reveals the omissions.

The Couple Next Door is a must read for Lapena is not just a writer, she’s one of the Fates, weaving in a thread of omission, a thread of an incomplete truth, then gently pulling it, leaving it for a while only to come back to tug at it and then having it unravel. Keam’s Josiah Reynolds series is also a must read on not only how to make a lying protagonist likeable but also because Josiah has a refreshing worldview, albeit a little quirky.

The best way to learn to lie is to study the lie and the techniques used by Keam and Lapina are great studies (and reads), indeed.

April: Grammar and Punctuation

Believability Frog Jones The Writing Life No Comments

Welcome to April.

We’ve talked a lot on this site about the art of writing.  We’ve covered characters, we’ve covered plot, we’ve covered setting and theme.  All of the big, large-scale things that make a good story great, and all of the artistic touches we, as artists, put into our work.

But this month isn’t about any of that.  This month, we’re getting really down to the nitty-gritty.  Watch as our members seize upon their favorite piece of grammar, and expound upon the proper and improper uses of that rule.  We’ve got Guy Anthony De Marco going on a tear about prepositional phrases.  Quincy Allen is going to talk to us about the importance of diagramming every sentence you write in detail.  I, personally, will be dealing with my trials and tribulations with the nefarious semicolon.  Greg Little has an eye-opening piece on all of the wonderful things he does with conjunctions.  And we’re going to end this month with a fight to the death between Nathan Barra and Kristin Luna over the Oxford comma–I’ll let you figure out who’s taking what side on that one.

So stay tuned, because this month is going to get past the art of writing into the true, deep, mechanics of the thing.  And at the end of the day, if you manage to stick with it, you’re going to be amazed at what you’ve learned.

 

 

If you’ve made it this far, you probably realize what day it is.

That’s right; April Fool’s.

No, I didn’t intentionally sign us up for a whole month of grammar and punctuation.  Yes, those things are pretty important, but I’m not about to make my first month picking a topic that boring.  (I await the swarm of e-mails disappointed that this actually wasn’t the topic).

No, instead our theme for April is much more insidious.  Our theme is the April of Fooling People.

See, it’s our job, as fiction writers to lie to the reader.  Any time we write that something “happened,” it didn’t.  That’s the fun of writing fiction; it’s all a lie.  But the trick is in being good at lying to people.

And, what’s more, having one’s characters be good at it is an art in itself.

So, this month will be a month devoted to the art of deception.  How to pull off a twist ending, unreliable narrators, scoundrels, and sleight of hand will all feature in the posts you see over the next month.  So buckle up, folks, because sorting out what’s actually true over the next month is going to become a real issue as the Fictorians begin the April of Fooling People.