Categories
The Importance of Writing

The importance of being a better blagger

If you’re going to live a lie, you better do it well. This applies as much to your characters as they do to real life, as one inept conman found.

As I’ve said before, writing is a form of lying and as such you need to maintain the suspension of disbelief, the big lie, or else people will see through it.

This means that if you create a character, all their actions have to be believeable – from their mannerisms, reactions, actions and speech. As Allan Debenham found to his cost.

Categories
Research

Being a better liar

Scientists say that if you want to write fiction you need to be a good liar.

According to Matthew Newman and James Pennebaker of the University of Texas, liars speak and choose their words differently from those telling the truth, and this affects how we write.