With practice you can become the brother-in-law of lies. Conflict |
Dirty deeds |
Evilcraft |

How to lie to someone's face

Whatever kind of evil you specialize in can go better when a little bit of falsehood is incorporated. There are lies which work as lures, lies which corrode decent society, lies which disguise a heinous act, lies which allow the perpetrators to go unpunished, the list goes on and on. One of the most prized skills in connection with lies is the smooth and convincing deployment of one directly at a person who perhaps has little or no reason to trust the one performing the deception. These range from inconsequential little misstatements that virtually no one cares about to blatant denial of vast stretches of the historical record.

Evil plotpoints

Make up a practice face. To a paper plate, attach a life-size picture of the face of the person you want to lie to, then tape it to the wall at eye level. Practice making light conversation to the face (perhaps with a willing helper to roleplay the responses), then turn the conversation to business matters and set up the big lie you need to give. If you are not accustomed to improvisation, you may want to type out the lie and read from the script at first. Start out by delivering the lie in the case of a receptive response from your conversation partner, then a neutral or indifferent response, then work your way up to suspicion, hostility, and threatened violence. If you explore the gamut a couple of times through, you will be better prepared for the real thing when conversing with the live, non-pie-plate, face.
Mix your lies with truth. Most people start out from a place where they want to believe what they are told, and if you grease the lie with a few truths the recipient knows, they will be inclined to believe the whole package.
Misdirection. If you get to a bad place, you should plan one or two diversions to scramble the person's attention away from your howler of a falsehood. A sudden sound of gunfire, the smell of naphtha, the release of dozens of live monkeys, all can serve well to halt a discussion you need to reboot, and, if necessary, cover your getaway.
Bring a pal. Try to get an apparently disinterested third party (an "honest broker") to go along with your ruse, whether through simple bribery or by means of sophisticated mind control. One strategy is to snowball the lie by starting out with a simple, credulous mind, then use their apparently unbiased testimony to influence increasingly skeptical parties until you achieve your ends.

Strokes of genius

Believe otherwise. Salesmen know that if they can convince themselves of their product, the customer will pick up on this at an unconscious level and tend to believe as well. It is very much the case with lies as well, that if you can trick yourself into believing them when you need to sell them, you will stand a better chance at getting past your target's defenses.
Silent mistruths. One technique which works when your target is disposed to mistrust you is to allow silence to lead them in the direction you want them to go. This works especially well if they think they are smarter than you, as you feed them just enough information to reach the wrong conclusion, from which they will be very stubborn to give up.

Traps for mere fools

Shifty eyes. You do know why green eyeshades, dark glasses, and clouds of smoke are popular among card sharks, right? The little microtremors below the conscious level can undo what your carefully crafted words are supposed to convey, so if the stakes are especially high you might consider turning your back or imparting blindness.
Compounding the falsehood. Try to keep the number of repetitions of a given lie down to as small a number as possible, so the victim cannot pick up on small, inadvertent, discrepancies in the story.

Precious and needful

Sharp dress. Especially if you are trying to swindle a man who doesn't have money to spare — dress as if you have plenty of money to spare.
Distractors. Noisemakers, wads of cash, bright lights, whatever. Halley's Comet, among the astronomically unaware.
A bare face.
Media consultant.

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Created by: GrinningSkull. Last Modification: Tuesday 28 of July, 2009 16:36:48 EDT by CapellaNovafyre.

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