FACT OR FICTION? 

What's the difference?

by David B. Axelrod

    While it is true that the best source of stories is as often your own personal experience, that does not mean that writing what happened to you is automatically a "story." There is a presumption in an essay, if indeed a necessity in journalism, that the writer is stating facts. In creative writing, when writing fiction, it isn't that what you say is "true." Rather, it must be credible.

    It follows that, because truth is stranger than fiction, you could tell a story that is completely accurate and true and your listener or reader could well turn to you and say "I don't believe it." No amount of protest can fix that. Sometime things happen in life that are truly "unbelievable," or at least would not make a good story.

    What makes a story, in the conventional sense of that word, a good story is that it is sufficiently believable, or better empathetic, that a reader can understand and even identify with the places, characters, actions, that they don't just follow along, they can live in the story. 

    I could tell you I threw twenty-seven sevens in a row playing dice and became rich. It could be true, though it defies all probability and would be fairly boring if you kept at it for all twenty seven rolls of the dice! A storyteller would know enough to pick a more credible number of sevens that would be more probably and make pacing of the story better!

"The Biographical Fallacy"

    Similarly, when reading or commenting on a piece of fiction, don't assume that it is automatically about the author himself or herself. That's called the "biographical fallacy!" Even if a person writes a story that sounds as if it really happened to him/her, as a work of fiction, it should be treated as fiction. 

    Given that the measure of modern fiction is, as often, whether we believe it. It should not automatically be assumed it is true. Imagine that you wrote a highly believable story about a very strange event (or a violent event, or a very "personal" event) but you made it up. Of course a good writer draws from various observations and experiences to piece together a story but it would be very presumptuous of a reader to automatically assume that everything happened to the author.

    In fact, it might make a world of trouble for the author. You probably can see what I mean lately with this "zero tolerance" nonsense that has swept through schools since 9/11. Students write stories with odd or as often violent aspects and are suddenly expelled for being a danger to their fellow students. In fact, they have simply used their imagination to create a story and in fact should be complimented for it seeming so believable.

    Just as thinking bad thoughts does not mean you would do bad things, writing stories about life does not mean you have lived every detail of the story. So... when you write, you should draw deeply from your experience, your first-hand knowledge, to create a genuine and detailed setting, credible actions, events that your audience can see, hear, feel, sense fully. That is best done by bringing the moments of your own life back to life in well-rendered prose--fiction.

    When you read and comment on work, the direction of you take should not be to tell your fellow students and authors, "You were very brave to do that," or "congratulations on all you accomplished." It should be commentary on the  character you read about, and it also should take into account the little details that are most convincing or any questions regarding believability. 

    Remember, truth is stranger than fiction. Just because it happened doesn't mean it would be a good detail or even a believable detail in a short  story. Write on! Read on! Enjoy!