Basic Trope: Pausing before speaking means that you're lying.
- Straight: Alice asks Bob a question. Bob pauses before responding with a lie.
- Exaggerated:
- Hesitating for even the slightest fraction of a second is a sure sign that somebody is lying.
- He hesitates for a full minute, with audible "ers" and "ums", and then lies badly.
- Downplayed: A brief hesitation reveals that Bob made a slight adjustment to twist the truth to his favor.
- Justified:
- Bob needs some extra time to think up a lie and this is a tell.
- Alice asks a question Bob would be able to answer immediately if he were telling the truth, e.g. "What's your name?" When Bob takes about five seconds to respond, Alice can tell he's lying.
- Alice demands a simple yes or no answer to a complicated question that can be Metaphorically True or false (such as, "is this analogy for a scientific process accurate?"). Bob has to decide between the intuitive but inaccurate answer or the confusing but accurate answer, and decides upon the former.
- Inverted:
- Bob is a Consummate Liar who never hesitates before telling another lie.
- Bob hesitates before revealing an Awful Truth.
- Alice thinks Bob is lying because he didn't pause - ergo, it sounded rehearsed.
- Subverted: Alice takes Bob's pause to be this in an interrogation and badgers him on it. Bob is not only innocent but he has a neurological condition.
- Bob wasn't paying attention to what Alice said.
- Bob doesn't know the answer to the question, so he wasn't lying on purpose.
- Bob didn't immediately know the answer to Alice's question and it took him a moment to remember.
- Bob prefers to think and process questions before he answers them.
- Double Subverted: While Bob may not have been behind it directly, he pulled the strings.
- He heard it anyway, and pretended not to in order to make it seem like he was distracted.
- Alice asks him another question that he does know, and the same thing occurs.
- Parodied: The pause is absurdly long, Bob looks around the room, desperately coming up with a lie. Alice goes and gets a cup of coffee and Bob still hasn't though of it yet. He then comes out with a Blatant Lie.
- Zig Zagged:
- While Bob is capable of lying without so much as blinking, whenever he says something the audience already knows is a lie, he noticeably pauses.
- Bob had prepared for some questions that he believes that Alice might ask him, but is not prepared for others. The fact that he answers immediately for some questions and hesitates for others makes Alice suspicious.
- Alice gets suspicious when Bob freezes up, but then he drops an emotional bombshell she is more understanding. Once more evidence piles up Alice realizes that Bob came up an emotional sounding lie to cover for his obvious hesitation.
- Averted:
- Pausing before speaking is merely used when an emotional bombshell is dropped. It is a natural consequence of preparing oneself.
- Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic is averted, so hesitation abounds.
- Enforced: Meddling executives think the crime drama fans need more clues that Bob is lying, and have the director insert pauses into any line where Bob will lie.
- Lampshaded: Alice teases Bob about hesitating, because it almost made him sound like a liar.
- Invoked: Alice's best friend Donna tells her "Just come right out and ask him! If he has to think about it, you'll know he's lying through his teeth!"
- Exploited:
- Charlie overhears the conversation, and plays on Alice's fears by hinting to her that the fact Bob paused before answering may mean he wasn't being entirely truthful...
- Bob is aware of Alice's beliefs, and plays up his pauses as part of a double-bluff.
- Defied: Alice realizes Bob might not feel comfortable with what he is saying, and does not suspect him for lying just for hesitating.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "That's not fair of Alice to immediately know that Bob's lying just because he hesitated. I mean, the guy's probably not as perfect a speaker as Alice."
- Deconstructed:
- Alice automatically assumes that this is the case and accuses anyone who pauses before speaking of lying. This poisons her relationship with Bob, who is already somewhat introverted; every time he pauses to collect his thoughts, she gets upset and calls him a liar. To make matters worse, word gets around, leading to poor Bob getting a terrible reputation.
- Subverted 1, except Alice is fired from her job for bullying a disabled person.
- Reconstructed: The people who know Bob well support him and make it known that he is simply reserved and is often lost in thought. Later, Alice suffers Laser-Guided Karma for her smear campaign against Bob.
- Played For Laughs: Bob leaves spaces wide enough to drive a truck through while telling a blatant lie which Alice immediately accepts.
- Played For Drama: Alice already knows the truth, but asks Bob anyway as a Secret Test of Character. His brief hesitation draws out the drama before he actually lies, much to Alice's disappointment.
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