>>> Item number 28357 from WRITERS LOG9404B --- (117 records) ---- <<< Date: Wed, 13 Apr 1994 18:35:01 JST Reply-To: WRITERS Sender: WRITERS From: Mike Barker Subject: TECH: Are Fiction and Non-Fiction Different? Gwanda D. Newcomma took a hesitant step into the room. She shivered, looked at her feet, then whispered, "I.. I write non-fiction, and wondered if you could tell me about fic..fiction?" John T. Wordschmitt grinned, hand stuck out firmly, and arm reaching for her shoulder. "Why, sure! Call me Jaunty, everyone does! Fiction is real different from non-fiction, but hang around and try it, you'll like it." Gwanda took a step back. For a moment, she quivered between the quiet safe world outside and the inane mumbling behind John. Then a weak smile touched her lips as she touched the tips of her fingers to the hand still sticking out in front of her. "Do you blast every newcomer with a bold hello?" John laughed. "Only the ones who ask hard questions, like what's fiction. Look, why don't you try a romance to start, they're sweet and pretty easy. Then we could do a collection together, if you want?" He dragged her further into the fantasy, the twirling shining milieu of fiction, slowly separating her from the facts that held her tied to reality until she began to dance the stately pavane that twisted madness into profits. He wondered if she would hate him when she realized he was that most despised creature, an agent, a bloated parasite sucking 15% from those he infected with the artistic bug... [stop, stop... what was the question?] A while ago, a newcomer to the list mentioned that they had written non-fiction. Someone welcomed them with a comment to the effect that non-fiction and fiction are very different. I didn't say anything at the time, but I have been pondering that assertion, and wondered whether the rest of you find it as questionable as I do. Let me go back to (roughly) Shannon's model of communication - one person has some notion, perception, etc. They encode this in language (skipping lightly past the difficulties of that process) and transmit the result. Another person hears, reads, whatever the transmitted result. They, in turn, decode the message, reconstructing something which they think corresponds to some extent with the original notion or perception. There are stylistic and other techniques in the encoding process which are more often found in fiction or non-fiction writing. However, in thinking about those techniques, I really couldn't pinpoint any which could not be used in either field. There is, of course, a difference in the topic or content - non-fiction, by convention, is supposed to stick rather closer to facts, while fiction to greater or lesser extents involves deliberate use of non-factual material. But, and I think this may be the critical point, only the writer (and on occasion some witnesses to the events being described) knows for sure whether or not something is factual or purely imaginary. We may suspect that there is no Moriarty lurking in the criminal sewers of the world, but especially if the writer does a good job, we may be quite suspicious that this person might be real (not merely willing suspension of disbelief, but strenuous misleading of belief...). We may not want to believe that the President could mislead and deceive in a Watergate, but the descriptions and tales are simply too convincingly real to ignore, and the correspondence with facts overwhelming. Take a newspaper story - a stylized format, and conventions that sometimes try to keep it "objective". Yet when we read the piece about an accident at 4th and Vine, is there anything beyond those conventions that assures us that this is non-fiction? There is the common assumption that if someone besides the author were to check, there would be marks on the pavement, people in the hospital, police reports, etc. to match the description - but what difference does that make to the writing? Or take a fantasy story - "clearly" fiction, and again with certain conventions for presentation. Suppose that we were to check, and find that the author had suspicious dealings with rather ill-defined critters in the garden at midnight when the moon is dark? Suppose, indeed, that the events and scenes were no more than simple fact. Would this destroy the writing? I will admit that the style of presentation - scenes, point of view, etc. usually used for fiction and non-fiction are widely different. But I don't see that they must inherently be different, and in some cases it may be quite effective to borrow the style of the other sort. One nice aspect to fiction is that when the ending isn't what we wanted or the character doesn't say something well, we (as writers) can and should change it. Non-fiction, at least as a mirror for the "real world," is ordinarily not supposed to alter what is "out there." Selection, arrangement, and so forth can allow the non-fiction writer quite a bit of latitude in molding that mass of facts into a piece, but the non-fiction writer isn't supposed to catch the criminal or force the ending unless that is what "really" happened. Of course, this is no more than saying that non-fiction is supposed to deal with facts, while fiction deals in part or whole with an imagined reality which can vary from the facts (although it can also match them as closely as you want...). BUT - does this question of correspondence with "reality" change the writing? I think in either case (writing about "real" events or "imaginary" events), the problems of clearly showing the scene, characterizing participants, bringing out a problem and solution (conflict), keeping the reader's interest, and so forth are identical. Where, then, is the difference in non-fiction and fiction? Anyone feel up to explaining? tink [oh - Gwanda and John T. had a brief, but meaningful, romance. She taught him that love, not money, makes facts wobble and words spin, and they wrote happily ever after ... and that's the truth!]