Zero to One Column by Chuck Heintzelman
This month I’m examining the holy grail of fiction: truth. Before getting to the meat of this column I want to share something I’ve noticed about sayings about writing. Many of them involve blood.
C. Astrid Weber once said “The coroner will find ink in my veins and blood on my typewriter keys.”
I don’t know who C. Astrid Weber is, but I like that quote.
“Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”
This quote is attributed both to Douglas Adams and Gene Fowler. My favorite is by Red Smith.
“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”
I like this quote because it implies that writing can be hard–maybe even painful–and you must put something of yourself in your fiction.
What is truth in fiction? I’m not talking about facts. You could write a story with a fact that is obviously not true–let’s say the Earth’s sun is green–and as long as the story is internally consistent and, through tone and logic, does not feel like lying, the story is truthful. This is not to say that facts are unimportant. They add to your story’s verisimilitude. But facts are not the type of truth I’m talking about.
Verisimilitude is a great word isn’t it? It means having the appearance of being true or real. It’s from the Latin verum meaning truth andsimilis meaning similar. But I digress.
All fiction is lying, but the best fiction tells the truth (I don’t know if I heard that somewhere or just made it up). So if truth is all important, how does an author go about making his fiction true? Simple. By making every element of the story (setting, dialogue, character, plot, etc.) believable within the context of the story. Even elements within absurdist fiction have their own truth. Truths that don’t work in realistic fiction.
Even though the answer to creating truthful fiction is simple the actual execution is hard work. This is because there are so many story elements to make believable. Such as:
- Do the characters act consistently for their race, gender, profession?
- Does the dialogue ring true?
- Did the characters exist before the story began?
- Does the world exist before the story? After?
- Does the conflict seem genuine?
- Does the culture seem real? If multiple cultures, do they conflict/mesh well?
- Are descriptions of the world or props believable?
- Does the plot progress logically?
- Does the tension fit the situation?
- Does the story have a sense of place or does it take place in a vacuum?
- Does the dialogue fit the characters?
- Do the characters think, speak and behave appropriately for the situation they’re in?
- Is there continuity between scenes?
- Can the reader see/hear/taste/smell/touch the story?
And this list is just off the top of my head. If I spent a little more time on it I could easily have multiple pages. Many of the items in the Turkey City Lexicon relate directly to the perceived truth of your story.
When the fiction is true, the reader is better able to lose themselves in the story. Or, as John Gardner puts it, better able to enter “the fictive dream.”
Besides “seeming real” there is another type of truth in fiction. It is the highest truth. The Grand Poobah of truths. It is the discovery and expression of the human condition. The big ideas like “what it means to be human” or “why do we exist?” I must admit, this one’s a bit out of my league. It is, perhaps, the highest aim of art. But I don’t worry about it. Instead, I simply focus on trying to tell the best story I can.
And that’s all I have to say about truth in fiction. So, now, get out there and write the bloody truth.