Indicators of Veracity

Below are some extracts from an article in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin October 2004, about establishing truth in crime reports. I was struck by how these things also apply to fiction.

Are You Telling Me the Truth?
Indicators of Veracity in Written Statements

A second relationship that the authors found between veracity and features of the examined statements involved the inclusion of unique sensory details. Such information recounted by a suspect or victim includes detailed depictions of the five sensory perceptions—sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. In an assault case, for example, a truthful victim might describe the alcoholic smell of an assailant’s breath or the rough feel of his callused hands. Unique, rather than generic, descriptions add to the specificity of the sensory details.

Studies contrasting truthful, experienced memories with false, or constructed, ones have shown that the experienced memories contain more sensory information. Similarly, in studies of oral statements, researchers have found that truthful accounts include more details than deceptive ones.

The final part of the research involved examining the relation ship between veracity and the inclusion of emotions in the 60 written statements.

Memory studies have revealed that the recall of experienced events includes more affective information, such as emotional reactions, than the recall of created events. In oral statements, researchers have found emotional experiences present in truthful witness accounts but not generally in constructed ones.

More

So if you want something to sound real, include specifc sensory details and emotional experiences.