Plotmonkey Readers, it is my great pleasure to introduce you to one of the coolest women I know. I mean…I don’t even know if cool BEGINS to scratch the surface of this amazing woman and writer. COLLEEN COLLINS is an amazing writer and a working private investigator…and has had more adventures and misadventures than anyone I know! Not only do we have her this month, but she’s coming back in December to do a second workshop on writing believable private detectives.
Today, she picked an utterly fascinating topic…I hope you all enjoy it! I’m actually at Disney this weekend, so I’ll leave it to you and the other Monkeys to make sure Colleen feels welcome! And don’t forget to check out her books…clicking the bookcover will pop you over our Amazon.
Minding Your Mannerisms: Is Your Character Lying?
by Colleen Collins
We all know the edict of “show, don’t tell” in our writing. When it comes to showing a character who’s hiding the truth, how many of us have shown this by giving the character mannerisms we’ve read or heard are sure-fire lying behaviors, such as clearing their throats, touching their noses, averting their gazes. Guess what? Recent studies have shown liars don’t clear their throats or touch their noses or shift around any more than truth tellers do. In fact, curtailing their movements may be a by-product of trying to remember what they’ve said to keep their stories straight.
So let’s talk about some new mannerisms a shifty, torn, gullible, or maybe downright evil fictional character might do to hide their secrets by looking at some studies with real people.
For starters, it seems many of us who pride ourselves on having great “bullshit detectors” have been kidding ourselves. They exist in our imaginations only. Over the past decade, Maureen O’Sullivan of San Francisco State has done truth-telling studies on more than 13,000 people from all walks of life, including therapists, police officers, law students, artists, and dispute mediators. Of these groups, only 15 people were deemed highly skilled human lie detectors (about 0.1 percent). What makes these people exceptional lie detectors? “All of them pay attention to nonverbal cues and the nuances of word usages and apply them differently to different people,” she says.
O’Sullivan compares these skillful observers to Agatha Christie’s fictional Miss Marple, who could instantly judge the veracity of someone by comparing him or her to people she’d already encountered.
This corroborates with studies by Aldert Vrij of the University of Portsmouth in England, who has studied lies told by suspects in police-interrogation rooms. Vrij obtained police-recorded videotapes in which 16 suspects in the United Kingdom, charged with offenses such as arson and murder, told both lies and truths about their alleged involvement in the crimes. The police used forensic evidence, witness accounts, and the suspects’ eventual confessions to determine the actual events. Before learning the police conclusions, Vrij’s team analyzed the videotapes for signs of the suspects’ nonverbal reactions to questioning, such as gaze aversion, blinking, and hand-and-arm movements. They also looked at verbal cues, such as pauses in speech and speech disturbances, including “ahs,” stutters, and incomplete sentences.
But guess what? The only general difference Vrij found between liars and truth tellers is that the liars blinked less frequently and paused longer while speaking. Seems these longer pauses are preventative means to avoid speech errors and backtracking to fill in forgotten or incorrect details. “Their [liars] stories are too good to be true,” says Bella DePaulo of the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has written several reviews of the field of deception research.
Liars may also feel fear and guilt or delight at fooling people. According to Paul Ekman, a retired psychologist from the University of California, San Francisco, such emotions can trigger a change in facial expression so brief that most observers never notice. He terms these split-second phenomena “microexpressions” and that these emotional clues are as important as gestures, voice, and speech patterns in uncovering deceitfulness.
Interesting. Might be fun to develop a character who takes great delight in misleading people by lying, or perhaps indulges a risk-taking behavior by lying to see what he/she can get away with.
And then there are the studies that claim liars’ voices become more tense or high-pitched. This approach is the foundation of voice stress analysis (VSA), which is widely used by law enforcement and insurance-fraud investigators.
So let’s review some of these recently studied mannerisms you might use to describe a character who’s lying:
• Liars blink less frequently and pause longer while speaking.
• Liars’ stories are too good to be true.
• Liars (either due to their fear, guilt, or delight at fooling people) show fleeting changes in their facial expressions that are as important as gestures, voice, and speech patterns in uncovering deceitfulness.
• A liar’s voice becomes more tense or high-pitched.
Maybe the next time you have a character who’s ready to fib, cover up something, or launch into the biggest fish story since the beginning of time, one of these techniques will do the trick. Would I lie to you?
By all reports, Julie Leto was a sweet child once, somewhat shy, preferring to play quietly in her room making up stories. However, being raised with three brothers in a loud, primarily Italian household did have its influences and Julie discovered her inner tough girl. That’s probably why most of her heroines kick serious butt. Writing sassy heroines has worked out, as she’s sold over forty books to four publishers featuring strong, confident women. Julie lives in Florida with her daughter, a spoiled dachshund, a haughty lynx-point Siamese and a wide range of relatives all within driving distance.
Destiny
Dirty Little Secrets
Once Upon A Valentine
Through The Night
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Welcome, Coco! Thanks for the great article :) Happy to have you in the jungle!
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Hi Colleen! Welcome and thanks for giving us this great information!
I actually just read a book (I can’t tell you who’s it was because I go through so many) where the heroine’s voice would raise an octive when she was lying. The hero pointed it out a couple of times througout the book, and then a member of her family pointed it out also. It was a great addition to the story.
:scratch3: Leslie, was it one of yours? Gosh, I wish I could remember!
I’m at a point in one of my WIP where these tips will come in very handy. Thanks!!!
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Thanks Colleen. Its very interesting. I avert my gaze all the time and I always thought the other person would think I was lying, but in truth I’m just shy.
BYW – Great cover on Shockwaves
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What a very cool bit of information to have, Coco! Maybe the whole “shifting the feet” “nervous touching of the nose” etc. stuff came into popularity because it’s the kind of fidgety behavior *kids* might employ when they’re lying.
Really good information!
Thanks SO much for being here, we really are excited to have you.
PS: Jodie–doesn’t ring a bell!
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Hi Colleen welcome to the jungle!
Very interesting
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Hi Colleen :wave: Thanks for being here and this information couldn’t have come at a better time for me. I’m about to start writing a story where my heroine lies by omission regarding her work, so these tips will be really useful. Thank you so much!
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That’s some great information, Coco! It’s great to have you here! :grin1:
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Hi Ms. Collins, welcome to the Plotmonkeys. Thanks for the great info, it’s fascinating! I took your on-line class not too long ago and enjoyed it very much, not to mention the fact that I learned a ton about private investigators.
Have a great day all,
Cher :banana:
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Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Plot Monkeys, for your warm welcome.
I really enjoyed researching this article because I, too, was falling back on the ‘ol tried-and-true shifting feet, averting eyes, changing voice (etc.) mannerisms I’d always read other characters doing. The idea for the article started when I worked on a case with a polygraph examiner and started asking him about lying behaviors.
Speaking of lying behaviors :arrr: (not that pirates always lie, but they do tend to fib a little) there’s also a linguistic analysis technique that some police departments (and others) use to analyze witness/suspect statements for indications of lying. I took a workshop in this technique from a law enforcement officer…when our paths crossed again, he couldn’t remember where he’d seen me before, and decided I had to be someone he’d once arrested (I wondered why he kept staring at me so oddly).
Time to get to work…I’ll be checking in later to chat again, and at the end of the day, my business partner (who doesn’t know any of you and is therefore objective) will pick a blogger’s name to win a free copy of Shock Waves.
Best, Colleen/coco
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Hi Colleen and welcome to the jungle! I loved Shock Waves!!! Thanks for the great info.
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Thanks for the article… now I know better when my family lies to me!
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Colleen, thank you for hanging in the jungle with us today…I think it is awesome that you are also a real-live PI…must make your books very interesting…haven’t read anything by you yet, but I saw Shockwaves at Walmart, but I hesitated to pick it up since I wasn’t certain I would be to handle the content…however, I finally made up my mind to buy it, but I haven’t read it yet…I love the tips you gave us today…I won’t be using them for writing necessarily, but they will help me to keep my dorm kids in line when they even think about lying to me about something…Once again, thanks for dropping in…I will check back in later…I hope that eveyone is having a wonderful weekend so far…
Peace and love,
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Great article.
Am looking forward to It’s A Wonderful Christmas.
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Hi again everyone,
Cher, nice to “see” you again! Liza, glad you liked Shock Waves. Paula, hope you enjoy it (it’s hot, so be prepared :wink:).
I enjoyed my foray into the jungle (I keep thinking of the old Creedance Clearwater song…better run through the jungle…). You guys rock!
My business partner picked a blogger to win a copy of Shock Waves…
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I accidentally hit the “Submit Comment” button before typing the name…the winner is:
Liz!
Liz, send your mailing address to me at cocowrites2@gmail.com and I’ll pop a copy of Shock Waves into the mail this next week.
The World Series is on, so I must go…I heard the Air Force jets flying over Coors Field a short while ago, which was a thrill. The Rockies are struggling, but I’m a true-blue fan, so I’m keeping the faith.
Have a great week, everyone!
Colleen/coco
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Congrats Liz!
You will love Shock Waves!!!
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Congrats on the win Liz…have fun with the book…
Colleen, continue to keep the faith…someone has to cheer for the Rockies…I hope they win at least one of them…I know there are many diehard SOX fans out there, but I root for the underdog…btw, I live in SOX territory…I here enough about their rivalries with my hometown YANKEES…sorry they didn’t make it this far, but hey, you win some you lose some right…still a diehard fan anyway…
Peace and love,
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wtg liz
