LYING, CHEATING, DECEIT...OH MY!

Why do readers get upset when characters tell lies in our books? Or cheat? When I first published the Natalie’s Edge series, it was a criticism I got—“I’m not reading this. She cheated!” Again? Really? More constructs for our genre?  I guess “Romance” can’t have realistic events and people? I give up!

We all lie. Make no mistake about that. Lying is part of being human. When someone asks you a question—the infamous: Do these jeans make me look fat? for instance—rather than hurt someone’s feelings, we might tell them a slight lie, a white lie as it has come to be called, for myriad reasons. We don’t want to hurt their feelings, to tell the truth does no one any good, negative consequences far outweigh the positives, and the list goes on.

You may say lying takes shape by omission as well. This way may be a step up from the white lie. It isn’t a direct lie, but you simply answer equivocally, with a half-truth by omission. Others may argue it’s not a lie if it’s not clearly stated in a sentence. Are you married? “No, I’m not,” but leaving out that you might have a commitment to someone is an example of a lie by omission. I argue it’s worse, perhaps, than the white lie. And again, I am here to say, of course, I am guilty of the lie by omission as well.

Cheating on someone, going behind someone’s back, asking another to lie for you, those even jump higher up the ladder, and yup, I have been guilty of that in the past as well. I am not going to sit here and call myself a saint. Sometimes being in love can truly blind us and make us do stupid things. Yeah, sure. I did just use that excuse. And so do my characters. Are we really that righteous, that above it?

But there are times when lying goes way, way above the white lie vortex and instead, leaps into a black abyss of complete immorality. These lies are the ones that take effort, planning, fore-thought. These are the lies that can’t stand alone. These are the lies that cause lie upon lie upon lie to be told, perhaps even bringing in others into the mayhem of the swirling storm of deceit. These are the lies that hurt people. They hurt their psyche. They hurt their ability to trust. These are the lies that can scar a person, not physically, but mentally. And if these people become characters in our books, we grow to dislike them, hate them even. These are our true villains.

In real life, those types of lies come from people who are who they are. You cannot thrust your own morality onto another. You have absolutely no control over what another human being does or is capable of doing. You must accept that. The only thing you can control is how you behave after it. How you react and how you deal with it. That is the ONLY thing in your control. You cannot control the actions of others but you can control the actions of yourself. And for me, I choose to realize that lies told like that have nothing to say about my character but about another’s. People like that don’t have character.
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But in our books, we can choose to have the “good guys” win, to have the bad guys get what’s coming to them. Maybe even to suffer. Or, we can choose our bad guys to find redemption. And that, too, is the question we must pose in our real lives. Some people deserve forgiveness. But there are others, who do not. Why should our books be any different than a reflection of authenticity?