By definition, fiction is the telling of stories that spring from imagination and not fact. Non-fiction deals with facts, histories and realities as they have come to be known.
But what about truth?
Are facts true? Certainly. But what about the pang a father feels as he wraps the scarf tighter around his six year old daughter’s neck before she heads off across the lawn on a cold November day to the awaiting school bus? Even though we don’t have facts and figures of the father or daughter, is the wistfulness in his eyes as he watches her board the bus any less true?
What about George Washington? We know when he was born, when he died and we even have some speeches that sprang from his own quill. These are both facts and true. But what about the despair he felt as he walked amongst his troops on the banks of the Delaware River who huddled together in freezing weather, close to low fires, some with tatters for uniforms, some with literally no boots. We don’t know for sure that he felt despair as his men who were on the precipice of defeat, but it would still ring ’true’ if a fictionalized account, wouldn’t it?
Stephen King calls fiction the ‘truth inside the lie.’ It’s a good phrase because it’s accurate and it, uhm, rings true. Good fiction is wholly made up, but when it’s really humming, it’s transportive. And it can only do that if you believe what you’re reading. You allow your mind to accept the truth of the fiction. When people put a book down and exclaim ‘I don’t believe it!’ they’re speaking both literally and figuratively. They don’t buy the ‘truth’ that’s being laid out before them and they also don’t think the writer has pulled it off because it’s unbelievable.
I run up against this time and time again when I’m trying to create a landscape on paper that has weight, resonance and truth. Life, really. To give you an idea, here are some recent examples of things I’ve been working on…
…A creature found alive in the deep basin of the Amazon sends a famed herpetologist on an Ahab-like quest to confront a childhood nightmare as well as bring validity to a long dead cause…
…Eavesdropping on a conversation between CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien as ‘Tollers’ gently uses imagination AND fact to convince his friend, Jack, of the truth of the Gospel accounts…
…A famed bounty hunter in a small Texas town wrestles with both grief and the coming realization that a piece of his history is seeking vengeance…
…A waist gunner aboard of crippled B-17 is one of two surviving members of a doomed mission. He has a parachute and his wounded comrade, who is urging him to bail out, does not. Survival or companionship; keeping his life or giving it away for others. What to do…
All of these stories have pieces of facts based on their milieus but they’re all totally made up.
But I want them to be true. So the reader will feel the ‘skin’ of the story and nod in recognition, placing themselves in the story because they are want to be wrapped in a world that takes them away for a little while.
A real world that is both true and not so much.
And there’s the rub.
