Communicating lies to the reader, not the character

[Chasejxyz]

I have a (villainous) character that lies to the MC a lot to warp her worldview to get her to join his (nefarious) cause. Example using real-world info: The war of 1812 was between the United States and Poland and was about nuclear armaments. A reader would say "wait a minute, that doesn't sound right" and get the feeling that this person is lying and shouldn't be trusted. But since this is a fantasy world, there's no way for the reader to know what countries did or didn't exist at a specific time period or what were the real intentions of political figures.

So...how do I signal this to the reader? Because of the circumstances of their relationship, the MC might overlook what might be obvious tells but I'm totally blanking on what those could be. I also have a little wiggle room in that the narrator already knows the truth (since this is being written about after the events in question) but it's still 3rd person limited, so I can't jump into his head.

 

[Penpilot]

If the villain obviously lies about innocuous things that don't necessarily affect the plot then that casts doubt on the veracity of their other claims. Obvious liar lies. Maybe it's about what they had for dinner or about who was there and what they said. Establish a pattern of obvious tiny lies that the POV character sees but dismisses as a slip of the tongue or a forgetful moment. So when the villain states something that is important to the plot, the reader will be suspicious and the POV character doesn't have to be. Another thing you can do is have another character express doubt about what the villain says and then have the POV character dismiss them or make excuses for the villain.

EG the villain says they had chocolate cake yesterday and it was the best they've ever had. But the POV character was there and it was a blueberry pie and the villain hated it. But int he POV character's eyes the villain is obviously trying to help the chef save face. He's so kind.

 

[CupofJoe]

Along the similar lines... Have the Villain take the credit for something the MC did or knows who did do it. It will add to their untrustworthiness...

 

[Prince of Spires]

It's a gradual process and not all readers will figure it out at the same time (and some will only get it when re-reading the novel with explicit comentary mentioning where the villain lies lying next to them...).

It helps if you can have a few scenes from the villains POV. It doesn't have to be a scene where he lies about something important to the MC, like your nuclear armaments war for example. But if you can show the villain thinking one thing and saying another, then you can establish him as unreliable to the reader.

You can plant other, smaller lies which the reader can catch (if they're unfolding as we see them), you can have another character give a different version of events. Or you can simply have another character contradict the villain when he sais something. It can be a simple conversation between the MC and a secondary character where the MC remarks on the nuclear armaments war, and the other character makes an offhand "I thought that was about something else" remark. You can even use that to show the conviction of the MC in the villain by having him defend the villain.

 

[Tigerseye]

There are a few options you could use.

Option one- do as others have suggested and establish the fact that this character is a liar. I would start it small and have a good reason for MC to brush off these little lies. The risk you run here is your readers not understanding that it is a lie, not everyone will pick up on it, but sometimes you need to trust your readers. They may not realise it is a lie but they shouldn't be surprised when they find out. If you want your readers to know a version of the truth before the lie is fully revealed, then you could have another character contradict the lie but make sure that MC has a reason not to trust this source over the liar.

Option two - POV change. A very easy way to show that MC was lied to is to have the liar's POV, or the POV of other characters talking about the truth out of MC's hearing.

Option three - Epigraphs. I have seen this work with other authors but it's probably a tricky one to pull off. Beginning each chapter with an excerpt of an 'in universe' source such as a snippet from a history book/ a letter/ newspaper article/ song or poem. The readers are, therefore, privy to information that MC is not and will know that they have been lied to.

 

[WooHooMan]

If you want something quick and easy: maybe have the narrator establish a “tell” for your character. Like, they avoid eye contact when they lie or they fidget or touch their face.
If the narrator takes note of that behavior, the reader can assume there’s significance and could likely come to the conclusion that it’s a sign of the character lying even if the other characters don’t pick up on it.

 

[FifthView]

One of the most expert examples of this, in my experience at least, runs throughout Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy. Totally in first person, and only one first person POV, she's able to reveal lots to the reader without revealing it to the POV character.

Her method of doing this is to have her character obsess over things. Sometimes it's obsession, but maybe it's just extreme focus other times. In any case, Fitz will be talking with someone, that person is giving all sorts of information, but Fitz only "hears" part of it and goes off on a tangent in his own mind about that one thing. Or sometimes he's hardly listening at all and still thinking about something that happened in a previous scene. Meanwhile, the reader gets all that info. We aren't quite so obsessive or focused. Technically, since it's first person, Fitz gets the info too; but hearing something and really paying attention to it are two different things.

When multiple characters deliver this kind of info, we readers can begin to piece things together. Fitz doesn't, because he was focused on other things, thinking about other things. So he doesn't get the picture in full.

The downside to this method is that, combined with other aspects of Fitz, he can become a bit whiny, mopey, and any other negative trait associated with obsessive people who have a lot of feeling.

 

[Devor]

You could throw in certain physical tells, like touching their face or hesitating on the wrong word, or funny things with their eyes - too much or little blinking, eye contact, roaming, etc. Another thing that liars do is go into great detail about a slight tangent to look like they're going into detail about the thing they're lying about (i.e., if they mentioned the war of 1812 between the US and Poland, they might drop a million details about President Madison and DC because the mind latches onto any detail it can find). When it comes to the actual lie they tend to be vague, because none of those details are on hand. They might offer excuses that might not seem necessary, like they might say "sorry, I'm having a headache," to cover the awkwardness they feel about lying, even if nobody else has noticed. Finally, blaming someone is always a good go-to for liars, because people are less thoughtful if they're angry; "damn those Polish people for making us use nukes...."

Done right, those kinds of details will make the reader feel like the character is lying, even if they can't put their finger on it and don't know the details. It shouldn't take a lot.

Edit: Given the subject, another tell might be that the liar sounds scripted or rehearsed, down to all the dramatic pauses. One way to point this out to a reader is to interrupt the character once or twice, and then see that the he goes back to where he left off in the script, even repeating a couple lines exactly as he did before. So, the main lie might sound convincing, but scripted, while some of the others tells happen when there are questions that are off script. (There are lots of reasons a person might sound rehearsed, but lying is certainly one of them.)

 

[Rosemary Tea]

Along the similar lines... Have the Villain take the credit for something the MC did or knows who did do it. It will add to their untrustworthiness...

Or something the MC doesn't know who did do, but the reader does. The reader knows Jack Sprat did it, but the MC didn't witness it and the villain takes the credit.

Or have the villain tell the MC something that's impossible but potentially just an exaggeration. Something like this famous line from the movie The Usual Suspects: "When I was picking beans in Guatemala, we'd make fresh coffee, I mean right off the trees." If you know anything about coffee cultivation, you know that coffee cannot be brewed right off the tree. It takes about ten days of drying and processing before the coffee beans are usable.

Another good one, and I'd definitely do this if I were creating the villain (I've personally known someone who did this, and it turned out this person was as big a liar, for about as nefarious purposes, as your fictional villain) is to have them say one thing on one day and tell it a little differently another day. For example, they talk about an event that happened "last year," then the following week, that same event was two years ago. Easy to write off, they might just be casual about keeping track of time, but when they do it again and again, something seems off and it's hard to put your finger on it.