Are fiction writers just dirty little liars?

     When do readers expect fiction to be “true”? OK that’s a contradiction in terms. Fiction is about imaginary events and people; invented or fabricated as opposed to fact. So why do we sometimes want to hold writers to account and complain their description of a certain place is inaccurate or an event does not ring true?

     I came to this subject through Bruce Chatwin’s Songlines, which I read on first publication in 1986/7. It is not clear which year it first came out. I enjoyed this novel and admired Chatwin. On the Black Hill ranks as an all time favourite. Set in Wales, it evokes rural farm life and the small surrounding community. Chatwin amalgamated real places and people into his storyline but I didn’t think for a moment the story was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

     Why then did I feel such disappointment when I read in an interview with Chatwin at the time of Songlines’ publication, that he had never visited Australia. In the novel he describes a trip through the Australian Outback in which he researches Aboriginal song and its influence on nomadic travel. His convincing descriptions led me to believe he was writing from personal experience. Yet he was actually writing from thorough research. Shouldn’t I have been happy that his research was so impressive and detailed it gave flight to the first half of the book.

     Over many years it kept niggling whenever I saw the book on my shelves. How could someone write with authenticity about the Outback and Aboriginal culture, without having first-hand experience. Well, writers do that all the time. But perhaps because Chatwin was using Aboriginal culture in his novel the idea he was working purely from research didn’t sit well with me. In 1987, post publication, Chatwin seems to have made a hastily arranged visit to the area north of Adelaide, but so many years after the event, it is hard to verify the actual facts. Does it matter anyway? On reflection, I think I was taking the book too personally. Here was an outsider writing about my country. Just like friends and family who recognise elements of themselves in novels and take umbrage at perceived inaccuracies, I felt there must be something false in Chatwin’s work.

     

     The truth is, out of necessity and creative drive, writers invent, imagine and create. Sadly, not many of us are that interesting, nor do we enjoy lots of interesting encounters or experiences. Many are saddled with dull personalities lacking in intellect etc. You get the picture. So in order to present interesting characters and plots, writers combine a snip from here and a snip from there, shaping their stories through the real and the imagined. Readers need only be concerned if something untrue is intentionally represented as true. It’s fine to fabricate, as long as it’s fiction. Though there have been plenty of non-fiction fabrications too.

Told by an Idiot

Faulkner in Paris 1925 by WC Odiorne

   I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written on it. These humble words of American writer William Faulkner resound with the depth and sensitivity of his novel and short story writing.

   It made me wonder, is it because their thoughts are only clarified in writing, that writers feel compelled to write. Maybe that’s why many writers are not good at self-promotion and talking up their novels on promo tours. You need the gift of the gab to be an effective salesperson; do writers have the gift of the written word instead.

   When I first read Faulkner’s, The Sound and the Fury, I remember closing the last page and thinking, wow, how did he do that. It was one of those profoundly moving novels that imprint themselves on the psyche; long after you’ve forgotten the plot details, you remember that moment of revelation; this writer is different to everyone I have read before. I think it inspired me in many ways to want to be a writer myself.

   The novel is about the Compson family in a fictional southern county of the USA and is told from four different perspectives, each equally convincing. Faulkner’s ability to feel and then relate events from different points of view marked him as a future Nobel in Literature winner. It also indicated a lack of ego, something useful in a writer, but not so useful on a publicity tour. Though having said that, I have met many successful writers with massive egos.

   Faulkner also advised to write from the heart about things that matter, like Shakespeare did. That’s why the universal truths in Shakespeare’s plays still resonate. That search for significance and meaning in existence takes time to construct.

   As writers weave ideas from heart and mind to the page, shape-shifting thoughts into sentences, rewinding passages and playing them over again, their thoughts eventually clarify and what they really think emerges.

  Writers seek more than an instant opinion which is all too often told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

How writers write

     Vladislav Bajac’s novel, Hamam Balkania, provides a thought provoking introduction on the writing process.  ‘The writer’s problem,’ he says, ‘one of countless others, is that they often confuse reality and imagination. That is the source of the famous loss of the boundary between what happened and what was experienced.’
     On character he says: ‘That is how I began to temporarily mix my encounters with people close to me; I want to say, I brought those who lived five centuries before me closer to my own time, and transferred myself and my friends (or characters) with ease into lives centuries older than we are.’
     That philosophy should be read before commencing to write. It will help to set you on the right path. I would love to hear other writers comments on the writing process.