Hello everyone
Most of us have have received an email from a Nigerian Prince.
If you’ve received one of these emails, you’ll know it’s wasn’t sent because you were singled out by foreign royalty, but instead, you were the target of a scam.
The scam usually promises the recipient a share of a very large sum of money which is due to the prince. There’s just one problem: the prince has to pay a small fee to acquire this sum of money, and he hopes you can help him with a short-term loan.
We don’t fall for this scam, in part, because we know it’s a scam, but more because the proposition is so implausible—why would a Nigerian prince know about the email recipient…why does the prince need to ask a stranger for money…why does the prince have no other access to funds?
Believable Scams
These scams are very infrequently effective, but there are scams that work, both in the virtual world and the real world.
Like the Nigerian Prince scam, scams which appeal to the (potential) victim’s greed (or need for money) can be effective. However, these often appear to be too good to be true (which is not surprising, given that they’re not true). In these cases, the scammer often readily acknowledges this apparent flaw, but then explains why the con is, indeed, true despite appearances.
But perhaps the most effective scam is the one that reinforces the victim’s preconceptions. For instance, a mechanic who tells the victim that their car needs work—indeed the scammer goes further, by suggesting the car-owning victim got there “just in time”…there could have been a fatal accident if they had waited.
In Fiction
Fiction, of course, is all about the scam (or, if you prefer, the con). Half the joy of many novels is being misled—or at least misdirected—by the author.
However, having a character be misled can be much tougher. If the reader twigs—before the character twigs—that the character is being conned, then (assuming the character has the same information that the reader has) the reader will feel smarter than the character.
It’s never good for the reader to feel smarter than the character—as readers, we want to spend time with characters we admire and respect (even if we don’t like them). No one wants to spend time with a dullard who gets easily conned (unless it’s a comedic novel where we revel in the character’s pratfalls).
But there’s a lot the author can do with the reader to mess with them while still keeping the reader’s respect for the character. For instance, the reader might be led to think the character is being scammed, where it’s actually the reader who’s being conned and the character has worked out what’s going on. Alternatively, the character and the reader might know there’s a scam, but the precise nature of that scam is unclear and needs investigation by the character so that the reader and character find out what is going on at the same time.
But like the real-world scam, the best way to mislead a reader is to make the reader think they know the answer. If the author can make the reader think they know something, but then subvert that knowledge or use that belief against the reader, then the author can really surprise the reader.
Until October
That’s me until October.
Stay on the lookout for scams—there are lots of greedy people out there—but do enjoyed being conned and misled by your favorite authors.
All the best
Simon