I have a story where the love interest, Evie, is being catfished by her neighbour, Sheila. Clover is the MC and she just moved town, Evie is her new neighbour. I want Clover to form somewhat of a friendship with Sheila throughout the story. I also want her to find out relatively early on that one of Sheila's main hobbies is catfishing a very large amount of people. She will not know that Evie is one of those people. I feel like as soon as Evie mentions being in a long distance relationship with somebody she has never met, readers will make the connection between her and Sheila and it will be really obvious. Ideally, I would like the fact that her long distance girlfriend is actually Sheila to be a surprise. Or at least to not be suspected until later. Do you have any suggestions for how I can make the audience aware of these facts without them seeming connected? I know that giving some other purpose to finding out this fact about Sheila would make it less obvious, but I can't really think of anything that makes it feel not obvious. Could it be that I just need to accept that most readers will figure it out? In case any of you are not familiar with the word, catfishing is when you pretend to be a different person online and persue fraudulent long distance relationships.
Evie could describe her significant other as someone who could not possibly be Sheila. You could also choose to go through a less heavy-handed route when describing Sheila's hobby to Clover. If you lay down all the facts at once, then that is what'll make it easy for people to make connections right away. Try shrouding Sheila's hobby in mystery over a longer period of time or barely mention it at all. You could describe Sheila's catfish-like behaviors/interests without making it obvious that what Sheila does IS catfishing.
That's actually a really good idea, describing Sheila's hobby in a really vague and gradual way. I could leave it so that you only find out what she's doing around when you're supposed to know she's doing it specifically to Evie.
I'd downplay that she does it at all - have it be a known but minor part of her character, so it's easy to glaze over. You could also lampshade it by having someone suggest to Evie that she's being catfished, and have her refute it with reasons that seem perfectly valid.
