Who tells the truth in your story? Anyone? Everyone? Whom are your readers intended to believe, and are they wise to do so?

How much of your story world is firmly reflective of story “reality”, and how much is an excellent con game on the part of the author?

The thing is, by and large the plot of a story (at least a grown up one) can’t be all simple and honest, or where’s the suspense, the tension, to play with the reader’s emotions? But I have a problem: I like my heroes… they’re good guys — maybe they’re naive, maybe they have a lot to learn, but they mean well, even the bad guys who are induced to reform. And that plays the devil with suspense.

One approach is for the naive good guys to discover, with the eager assistance of the bad guys, just how naive they are. Maybe your readers incautiously took the side of the good guys and are just as surprised as the characters are. (You better hope…, or they’re already bored.) In any case, your good guys can largely be considered truthful, at least in their private beliefs.

It’s reasonably straightforward to concoct opposing characters, but they will have their own reasons for opposition — what will your readers think about them? Are they potentially sympathetic, maybe heroes-in development, maybe even incipient hero-allies? Or will your readers find their reasons for interference puzzling, obscure, unconvincing, even revolting? Well, they have their own stories to tell and their own beliefs, like all characters, like everyone. But what are the readers to think about them? Whom should they believe? And once the bad guy makes that choice, what does it do to the way the readers think about them?

Storytelling is, at its foundation, a work of applied psychology. That’s a foundational human skill — we need it to survive our kind. But we get fooled all the time, anyway — we’re imperfect experts in our perceptions. As writers, we have to make up the puzzles that others will have to survive, sort of a second-order skill. It’s not easy to do, and even harder to delight the readers in the process.

Sure is a lot of fun trying, though. Isn’t it? Sort of like being a magician and fooling your observers with puzzles to make them think, or to confound them.