This week: What is Fiction? Edited by: Max Griffin š³ļøāš  
More Newsletters By This Editor 
 
1. About this Newsletter
2. A Word from our Sponsor
3. Letter from the Editor
4. Editor's Picks
5. A Word from Writing.Com
6. Ask & Answer
7. Removal instructions
| By definition, fiction is made up. Fiction tells stories that never happened about people that never existed living in imaginary worlds. If it's all made up, it's all a lies. So, why bother reading it, let alone writing it? |
A wise teacher once asked me, āWhat is fiction?ā Getting no answer, she washed her hands and moved on.
That was then. This is now. Today, I know the answer. All fiction is a lie.
It's not just that fiction is untrue. Lots of prose can be untrue and not be fiction--propaganda, for example. What makes fiction a special kind of lie is that the author partners with readers who know it's a lie, expect it to be a lie, and enjoy it being a lie.
Think about it. Thereās that whole willing suspension of disbelief thing. The basic premise of fiction is that readers willingly believe the lies that they know the author has put on the page. They set aside the knowledge that itās all a lie in order to lose themselves in a fake world, to meet characters who never existed, to experience a universe constructed of lies. The whole enterprise of fiction is a built on a foundation that everyone, writer and reader alike, know is constructed from lies.
Letās look at some evidence, at examples of books that are obviously lies.
For starters, consider Animal Farm. I mean, pigs canāt talk, let alone give orders to other farm critters. Pigs just want to wallow in the mud and make more pigs. They are innocent animals that canāt be corrupted by power, even absolute power. Itās obviously a lie from the get go.
For another example, we know that a detective named Sam Spade never existed. Sure, in The Maltese Falcon, he lives in a real city, San Francisco. Itās populated by believable characters: corrupt cops, evil criminals, and an alluring client who betrays him. As often happens in real life, the prize they seek turns out to have no value. Through it all, Spade, a moral man, makes moral choices in a world that has no morality. But itās a lie. All of it. Sam, Brigid, Cairo, Gutman, the falcon, the world they live ināthey are all made up. Lies.
Kafkaās Metamorphsis starts with an even more obvious lie when Gregor Samsa wakes up, transformed into a cockroach. Of course heās estranged from his family. I mean, who likes cockroaches? Heās even estranged from himself. Go figure. Heās a cockroach, after all. At least that part makes sense, even though the rest of it is an obvious lie.
How about those brothers that Dostoevsky wrote about? We know those three never roamed Imperial Russia. After all, it's the biggest country on the planet, yet they keep bumping into each other--an obvious lie. Their family, fractured along fault lines of rationality, sensuality, and spirituality never existed. For that matter, does the God Alexei's so concerned about even exist? If He does (in Alexei's world, God apparently has a gender), is He just? Is justice even possible in the cruel world Dostoevsky constructs, where suffering is everyoneās fate? Wait. It doesnāt matter since itās all a lie in the first place.
Most SciFi starts out with a lie. Consider Flowers for Algernon. The surgery that makes Charly smartāitās a lie. It doesnāt exist. That means that his whole character arc, his evolving relationship with intelligence, emotion, and happiness, never happened and never could happen. He starts out lonely and unable to spell or write a grammatical sentence. He winds up in the same place, after experiencing intellectual brilliance, the passions of love, and the despair loneliness. But, itās all an impossible set of lies. It never happened and never could happen.
How about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep--Bladerunner, to movie aficionados. This fictional world includes artificial humans, an obvious impossibility (at least when it was written). They might be artificial, but they turn out to be not much different from real humans. They love. They hate. They are lonely and they suffer. They die. They are even poetic. The real human chasing them might even turn out to be artificial himself, and not know it. In fact, no one in the entire fictional world really knows what it means to be human, even though they all think they do. The answer to that question should be obvious, right? But the relevance to reality, to our lived reality, doesn't exist, since the story's constructed reality is all premised on a lie.
Even fiction that masquerades as fact is a lie. Consider Capoteās In Cold Blood. This tells a story, a constructed story, about real murders and real murderers, but does so using all of the tricks of fiction. It lures readers into that fictive dream, where they imagine living in the printed world, the constructed world on the page, rather than the real world. The world Capote builds blurs the distinctions between normal and abnormal, between victim and perpetrator, between good and evil. Sure, it raises questionsābut that world, Captoteās world? Itās something he constructed. It's a lie.
Pick any bit of fiction, and youāll realize what Iām saying is true. The Odyssey, Jane Ayre, Moby Dick, The House of Usher, Catcher in Rye, The Old Man and the Sea. The people in those stories never existed. The worlds they live in are all constructed, not real. Theyāre all lies.
Hemingway knew it. He wrote, "I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks.ā See? He admits itās a lie, a creation. He admits he tried to make them real.
Of course, he went on to say, āBut if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things".
So, yes, fiction is a lie. But, Hemingway is onto something. The examples show fiction is a lie, yes, but they also show something deeper.
Fiction is the lie that reveals truth.
|
Have an opinion on what you've read here today? Then send the Editor feedback! Find an item that you think would be perfect for showcasing here? Submit it for consideration in the newsletter!
https://www.Writing.Com/go/nl_form
To stop receiving this newsletter, click here for your newsletter subscription list. Simply uncheck the box next to any newsletter(s) you wish to cancel and then click to "Submit Changes". You can edit your subscriptions at any time.
|
For Authors: October 22, 2025 Issue [#13407]
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
