Why you should write characters who are wrong

Or, the art of the lie

February 02, 2024

a wooden mannequin standing in front of a light

Why to Lie

By the end of this article, I hope to convince you that writing characters who are wrong (for the most part) is the most interesting way to write a novel. I will be heavily quoting KM Weiland, whose book Creating Character ARCs is my plotting bible. I’m also going to throw in some John Truby of The Anatomy of Story fame.

To understand the argument for characters who lie (to themselves), we must first look at characters who don’t.

The Mary Sue

Ah, the dreaded Sue. The terminology came on the scene back in the olden times before Y2K, but it still means: a character who is unexceptionably perfect and loved by all (or hated by all for no reason despite being perfect).

I’m sure you can think of a few. Bella from Twilight. Violet from Fourth Wing. Ebony Raven Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way from My Immortal. And while the third is tongue-in-cheek, what do you notice about the other two? They’re wildly popular.

Writing a Mary Sue is not necessarily a book killer, and can work well in genres where people tend to self-insert.

However. I think we can all agree that Twilight and Fourth Wing don’t have a lot of emotional depth or literary prowess. They’re fun books, but we don’t generally finish them with a new understanding of ourselves and the world.

If you don’t care about that, good for you! Write the next Fourth Wing and get that bag.

For those of you who are looking deeper…

Start with a lie

For K.M. Weiland, it’s the lie. For Truby, it’s it’s a facet of the moral argument. We’ll use “lie” because I like the simplicity. Basically, you want to figure out: what does your character believe that is just plain wrong?

Maybe it’s as simple as “I don’t deserve love.” Maybe it’s more complex: “Men and women should be treated differently.” It’s a lie because, simply, it contradicts your moral stance as an author. Yep.

You have a moral stance every time you write, just based on who you elevate and who you denigrate.

Once you’ve got the lie, you ask yourself, how is this lie hurting your character and other people. Voila! You’ve discovered character flaws. With one simple lie, we have created a realistic human being. 1

Why do we care?

Why make a realistic human and not Bella Swan? Well, because you’ve decided that you want to say something with your book. And it’s a lot easier to do that if you start with someone who believes a lie.

Because you can spend the story hitting that lie over the head with mallets of truth. “I and others deserve love.” “Men and women are equal and deserve equal treatment.”

Your plot becomes, not just a series of cool events, but a series of opportunities for character growth and change.

A full study of character arcs is beyond the scope of this post. But basically, your ending moral argument, as Truby would say, is expressed by your character either believing in or rejecting the truth. Generally, if they believe in the truth, it gives them the tools to succeed. If they reject it, they fail and are worse off.

So…

So go forth and write liars! Let your MCs self-delude. And don’t forget your sidekicks! Let each of your characters believe a different version of the lie (although, you may throw in one or two who know the truth to guide your MC!).

And what you’ll find is that you begin to write deeper, more complex stories. Stories that express a moral argument. Stories that say something.

Before I go, I’ll add: you don’t have to be writing litfic to do this. You know what stories have great moral arguments? The Marvel movies. KM Weiland uses them extensively as examples. They’re fun, accessible stories and they contain character arcs predicated on a starting lie.

So if you want that bag, go forth and tell some lies.

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