Shedding Light on the Lie

Have you ever thought of your character as a product of a lie?

I am taking an intense self-character study that guides me in discovering lies I've been told about myself or told myself, throughout my life, and then face the lie, mourn it, and replace it with God's truth. Each step along the way, I can't help but consider how rich the material is for not only myself, but for future character development in my stories. It is as if I am on my own character arc, and trying to develop it more by tracing it backwards to the beginning.

Through this study, I was introduced to the movie, The Kid, starring Bruce Willis. If you've ever watched the movie, you'll know what I am talking about. Forty year old Bruce is visited by his eight year old self, and through the movie he has to discover what lie he was told that has made him the miserable person he is today.

He doesn't know the lie.

He doesn't know that he was ever lied to.

But that's what makes it such a journey. We watch him figure out that there is something (the lie) in his past that brought the eight year old to him, and he needs to back track his life, and figure out what must be sorted to live life to the fullest without his eight year old shadow. Without completely giving the movie away (BEWARE partial-spoiler!), the lie was something he was told by his father as an eight year old. A lie, that he didn't realize changed the course of his life for the worse. He let go of dreams and considered himself differently than if he was never told that lie in the first place.

On Fickr by Itspaulkelly

When our characters believe something about themselves that is based on a lie, it is like searching for a light switch in a pitch-black room that they've never been in before. Through their circumstances, they feel around for a wall--that emotion or event that produced the lie--and then explore it with desperate hands up and down, back and forth as they stumble, until they find the switch that will shed light on the lie.


As writers, it is our responsibility to give them circumstances, people, and opportunities to reach that light switch of self-discovery.

Once that lie is discovered, then the character has no choice but to live the lie and miss out on the opportunity to be greater, or to mourn the lie, and replace it with Truth.

Even though we write fiction, we are writing human nature into our pages. And the best part of Christian fiction, in my opinion, is the thread of a spiritual truth being exposed along the characters' journey. Just like most of the Old Testament shows flawed characters finding God's love in spite of themselves, our characters must also grow from a lie, to find the Ultimate Truth that will set them free at the end.


Do you have any examples from novels or movies, of a great illustration of a lie being replaced by truth in a character's life?

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Angie Dicken first began writing fiction as a creative outlet during the monotonous days of diapers and temper tantrums. She is passionate to impress God's love on women regardless of their background or belief. This desire serves as a catalyst for Angie's fiction, which weaves salvation and grace themes across historical cultures and social boundaries. Angie is an ACFW member and is represented by Tamela Hancock Murray of the Steve Laube Agency.