Several years ago, I did an interview with a writer who said he never reads fiction. He didn’t like fiction. He wanted to read true stories and obviously thought fiction a waste of time. I have to admit, when I’m reading this I wrote about that interview some time ago, I’m wondering why in the world he would be interviewing me or I would be interviewing him. I really don’t remember, but we obviously had different ideas about what we liked to read. At least I do also read nonfiction although fiction has always been my favorite reads.
Anyway, he asked me why anyone would want to read fiction. What is the purpose of reading made up stuff? I had ready answers. Entertainment, of course, was one answer. I told him reading is fun, and being caught up in a story is great. I tried to convince him that fiction could sometimes be truer than nonfiction in how it could touch a reader.
You, as the reader, can be the characters in a fiction book in a way that you can’t in a book about a real person. That person has already lived his story and you’re just along for the ride in the back seat watching the real events happen. But a fiction story – that’s different. You can jump right inside that character and live the story along with him or her. You’re not just riding along. You are experiencing the character’s every action and feeling.
That’s how it is when I’m writing a story too. For sure, when I was creating the characters for my book, the Song of Sourwood Mountain, I was living the story with them. I especially enjoyed sharing the story when I let Ada June, my ten year old character, be the one we were living the story through. Here’s a quote from a scene late in the book where Ada June is having to trust a boy she’s not ready to trust to save her from falling down a cliff.
I hope if you read the story, you will feel as though you are right there with Ada June trying to get a foothold in the side of the steep hill to keep from being that heap of broekn bones at the bottom.
Here are a couple of quotes I found in John Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations that give a viewpoint on fiction that I can go along with.
The first is by William Makepeace Thackeray from The English Humorists (1853). “Fiction carries a greater amount of truth in solution than the volume which purports to be all true.”
The second is Ernest Hemingway quoted in Hemingway: The Writer as Artist by Carlos Baker.
“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”
And so that’s what I always want to do – write a book that lets my readers own it in their hearts after it’s come to life in my heart.
So what would be your answer to the man who asked why read stories that are just made up?
Comments 8
Writers do so much research before they write their books and include the history and the culture of the time and place about which they are writing. Without physically traveling to a place, we can learn a lot as we read fiction. Our travels through fiction can be relatively inexpensive and highly entertaining.
Author
We do experience a lot that we can’t except by reading, Suzanne. We can’t go back in time, but we can pick up a book that takes us back there and lets us experience life in other times and places.
You have some good answers for the man’s question of why someone would want to read fiction. I have met plenty of readers though who do look at fiction as something that doesn’t interest them at all. I’m guessing that most of them probably enjoy a good movie though.
Whenever I’m reading nonfiction, it feels like I’m wasting reading time and can’t wait to get back to a good novel. I rarely finish a book of nonfiction but hate for a book of fiction to end. I guess I’d tell that guy that he doesn’t know what he’s missing.
Author
That’s always what I think when someone tells me they don’t read anything, Lee. I can’t imagine not wanting to dive into a book now and again. Well, as often as I can. I do read more nonfiction that I used to. Some for research for my writing. I have discovered that I enjoy some biographies or autobiographies. But like you, I have some nonfiction books I started that are still waiting for me to pick them back up. A good fiction book beckons me back to the story and I’m usually ready to pick it back up.
When I read a book of fiction I enjoy creating the scenes in my mind, it is like I am looking at a tv screen while reading, except I am creating all visuals and scenes, I really enjoy doing this and really cannot read anything without this happening, I wonder if anyone else does this also? I have not read your sourwood mountain book but look forward to getting it. Where can I purchase it? Phyllis
Author
The Song of Sourwood Mountain is available at most internet book sites. If you have a bookstore in your area, most bookstore workers will order a book for if you request them to do so. Baker Book House is a great place online to buy inspirational fiction. They offer a discount and free shipping on my book. https://bakerbookhouse.com/products/553564
I always compare reading to having a movie in your head. It’s sort of hard to explain, but the story does play out in the reader’s imagination much as it did in mine when I was writing the story.
There are many things in nonfiction that are made up, such as thoughts, conversation, the weather on a certain day. Unless the subject kept copious notes of their life, something keeps it moving along unless it is documentary style.
Author
You are so right, Jeanie. I have written one nonfiction book, Angels at the Crossroads. It’s the story of friend who was a mixed up young man and went to prison for murder, but got a second chance at life because of people along his road. I did put words into his mouth and those of others in the story although I did have a sheaf of letters that he wrote home to his parents while he was in prixon and that his mother had kept. I used the letters in the story without change. Jerry did tell me his story, but as you say I did have to come up with many of the thoughts, conversations and more to make the book work.