A Deliberate Lie: The Difficulties with Characters’ Ignorance within Written Dialogue

Fictional characters—just like real people—don’t always talk in the most coherent or logical way. Both intentional and unintentional. Whether its deliberately lying about something, making something up due to ignorance mixed with confidence or talking about a subject to appear as if the person has the knowledgeable authority within the group: people lie, for many different reasons.

This is also the case for fictional characters as well. But the issue then comes with planned, written text where the dialogue is thought-out by the writer beforehand. And because of that, the expectation of the information given within the dialogue to be lore-accurate and make sense within the story is quite high from the start.

Storytelling is many times put under a microscope. It can be the writer who micromanages every detail of the storytelling. Or it can be the reader whose expectation of every character-spoken line to be correct about what the character is talking about relative to what is the true in the story itself. It does not matter. The underlining issue is the wanting of everything in the written work to make sense all the way through it no matter what.

Not everything a person says or does in the real world makes sense. Yet the expectation for the words and actions of fictional people to be perfect and accurate at all times is always there.

An example of this is to think of a regular village farmer the protagonist is talking to. The protagonist asks the farmer where to find a place in the local area. The farmer then tells the protagonist the name and location of the place. Later within the book, it turns out that the place the farmer told the protagonist about has a different name then what farmer claimed it has.

In the fictional world, it would make sense for the farmer to say a different name of the place due to a multitude of factors. Factors such as the place having different names depending on who you ask, the farmer having a secret reason for lying about the name or the farmer misremembering the name of the place entirely.

However, doing this in creative work will have the potential of being seen as a mistake by the writer and not the characters. This is due to the written work being about made-up people, and all their actions and dialogue are all pre-planned beforehand by the creator. It is then expected of the creator to always be aware of everything they place within the fictional world and the information given out about it throughout the books.

This makes the writer responsible for character’s deliberate misleading, malicious or misremembering behavior within their dialogue. Regardless of the intentions of the character.

It is of course possible to describe the interaction in ways where the reader becomes aware of the character saying something which might not be true. It does all depend on how the information is being given. Even if the characters are lying, the text itself can’t give out incorrect pieces of information without giving context of its intentions.

People lie, but the book does not.