I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth…

I’m sure everyone has heard those words before while watching a court drama, just before the witness tells a big fat whopper of a lie.

Often times in novels, just like in life, the characters lie. Fortunately for us when  we are reading we are in the character’s head (if the writing is good) so we understand the motivation behind the lie. That doesn’t stop us from smacking our own forehead or hanging our head and screaming at the character, “Tell the truth, tell the truth you idiot.” The reader can see the big picture and we know that he’s going to get caught eventually.

  But as author Mona Karel said on her blog post about characters being misunderstood within a story, which I totally agree with (and I paraphrase), it’s the drama we love when we read books. The lies add to the drama of the story, making me want to read more to see how his lying ass is going to get out of the mess he has put himself into.

Note: I have used ‘he’ here as the liar solely as an example, the females lie too but…