Truth in Fiction

“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’ve always been in love with fiction. Maybe that reveals my love for escapism. I would rather follow the story of two strangers on a journey into a magical abyss instead of my normal life. The text on the page reveals a beautiful world of wonder and magic that comes from one person’s mind. I want to jump in and experience it. Escape from my reality for a bit.

But there is so much more to fiction than just escapism. Fiction relies massively on truth and hits hard when it needs to. Without truth, there can be no story. Without any semblance of truth, we cant connect with the narrative on the page.

In college, one of my classes got us to read a text and write an essay on the topic, “The Truth in Fiction.” From what you can decipher, can you search for truth in this piece of fiction you are dissecting? The text I chose was The Round House by Louise Erdrich.

The plotline of The Round House is 13 year old, Joe Coutt’s mother gets attacked and sexual assaulted. The novel follows the gruesome truth behind the jurdicial system in America in terms of sexual violence against Indegenious women. Erdrich uses real-life statistics for the violence towards Indegenious women and highlights that gruesome truth in this novel. Moreover, we follow how lacklustre the justice system is and how terribly they treat the investigation. The Round House is a fictional account, but Erdrich uses the vehicle of novel writing at her disposal, to shine a light on a real-life issue in reality.

Sometimes fiction can tell us a greater truth of reality than reality itself. Another interesting example would be The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Set in a dystopian future, we see children fighting against each other in televised sport. It sounds very far-fetched for the mid-2000s. However, you can find some themes and imagery that relate to our current state in society. The state of the political world at the time, almost looks regressive and close to the world that Suzanne Collins invisioned.

“Telling a story in a futuristic world gives you this freedom to explore things that bother you in contemporary times.” – Suzanne Collins

You think when you read a YA dystopian novel, you are escaping a reality that couldnt possibly resemble our own. But every piece of fiction reveals some truth, if not a commentary on our society or politics, but about what it means to be human? Family relationships, love, friendship and other themes showcase a universal truth that we cant escape through a piece of fiction. A masterpiece of fiction must discuss elements of truth, in order for us to feel it bursting through the pages. Themes that make us weep and plots that have us remembering them until we die. A piece of fiction that speaks to us and stays with us, brings a certain truth to our reality. Reveals it in all of its facets.

I want a story that reveals a beautiful truth in the life I lead. I always sought out an escape in my reading. To me, fiction was the best escape. However as I got older, I realize that fiction presents a real truth to you that you can never escape. I read Normal People by Sally Rooney for the first time this year and that book broke me. It called me out and the existential feeling it left on me, brought me back to earth. I never knew what I wanted to do with my life and took up an English degree in college because I always loved English. Sally Rooney really called me out but also lifted me up when I needed it.

This is why I love to read fiction. You expect to escape and explore a world you never dreamed of. But that fictional world can provide you with so many lessons and truths that you never expected. Fiction provides an emotional sincerity by using fictional tools to tell it such as fictional characters and fictional settings. People argue that writers stretch the truth in order to tell their stories. There is accuracy to such a claim, therefore it is the reader who must define that truth for themselves. One can take what the writer concots at face value or absorb it as a monocle to a truth.

For me, I always loved crafting fiction and telling my story through that form. My current work in progress started off as a semi-autobiographical novel but it has turned into something completely different, completely fictional. But the core truth I wanted to show in the original work, shines through in this new project. I know this blog post is a little rambly, but what I am trying to say is, fiction speaks truth. Your truth, any truth, it doesnt matter. Art is truth, writing reveals truth. That’s why I find this medium of expression is beautiful.

I hoped you enjoyed this post. I hope you had a wonderful day and see you in the next one.

Short Stories vs Novels

I have been writing since I was about eleven years old (even younger if my mother is to be believed). So I dabbled in quite a few different forms of writing, creative, academic, and otherwise. I wrote poetry, and short stories, and wrote a few novels (not very good ones). In college, I wrote numerous academic essays and created my own thesis for my Masters degree. So throughout the years, I searched for my own style of writing. I haven’t perfected it yet, but one thing I figured out was my favorite type of writing genre.

A big question as a writer would be; do you prefer short story or novel writing?

Do you prefer writing a short piece of fiction or buckling down and embarking on a grand adventure in creating your own novel?

Now, my answer is a bit of a mess. I go with the wind. Whatever makes me happy at that moment. If I’m bored in the middle of writing my novel, I dabble in a little short story I was working on. Or if that doesn’t stimulate me enough, I scribble some poetry down. I go with my creative gut when it comes to writing.

But if I have to pick a favorite, I would say short story writing. It is a quick and easier form of writing. That being said, some short stories take me weeks to edit, while others take only a couple of days. I made my start in novel writing when my first piece of writing would’ve been a fanfiction novel I wrote based on the characters from Kingdom Hearts ( don’t worry! I’m harshly judging myself too). However, my true love for writing began when I wrote short stories for English class in secondary school. Instead of writing a personal essay, I always chose short fiction. I miss the days when I would get a one-sentence prompt, think of an idea immediately, and begin to write. Unfortunately, I lost that skill through college where professors provide you with essay questions before the exam. No more creatively writing from the top of your head. Then again, I wrote academic pieces for college and didn’t do creative writing like that until I hit my final year of my undergrad. So I lost that quick creative skill with my short story writing. Write from the gut and a story will come. It may be very generic at the beginning, but those kinks can be ironed out and fixed through editing, which secondary school didn’t teach me.

Even though I started with novels, I’ve never been able to hop back into it. Until now. For the past two years, I’ve been working on my novel, Project Selkie. She is such a drama queen. I kept putting it off and putting it off. Short stories were always my forte, then I dabbled in poetry and now, I am going to write my novel. I love all forms of written expression, as I’ve always used writing as my form of expressing my identity. So my answer is messy because I love both. A short story is an amazing little respite for me. I create a small piece that could become something greater. A short story can be just that or it can evolve into a novel such as Project Selkie. It started as a little short story idea, but it grew into something greater. So it’s a hard one to choose. But if I have to pick a favorite, I’ll say short story writing.

I hope you enjoyed my little opinion piece on this and I hope you all have a great day. See you in the next post.

A Writer’s Breakthrough

That moment when you find what your story needed. I had that recently with two of my short stories. In a way, I felt like I was hitting writer’s block with these two stories. One story I’ve been working on for over a year and the other, I think I’ve had in mind for even longer. I just couldn’t find a way to fix them. So I put them on the back burner for a while.

Recently, I picked them back up again because I wanted to return to short story writing. I always felt the most comfortable with writing short stories and I want to submit more of them. But I don’t have many stories that I am proud to submit. So I decided to go back and work on several stories and when they are more edited, I submit those select few whilst I work on my novel in August. Almost fresh, I looked at these stories in a new light and could see how I could fix them.

Well, let me tell you a story.

The current story I am working on is a short story called “Glass House.” I describe it as a dark and graphic sapphic tale set in a greenhouse. Originally, I created the story for a science fiction writing competition. I had a weird setup where the characters had numbers for names and these two girls ended up in the greenhouse. I didn’t like how that version turned out, but I liked the idea of following these two characters in that setting. So I stripped away the science fiction angle and just kept with these two women in a greenhouse. It evolved each and every time I went back to it. I had another character in the story and it became more graphic as I went on. But it hadn’t reached its full potential. A writer friend of mine wanted me to go more metaphorical with the piece and I felt I had too much already to try and fix it. It felt like it was unsubmittable. So I stepped away from it for a while. Then I tried to submit it recently. It was too long, too wishy-washy. So my only solution was to re-write it. Start from scratch. Then I discovered my issue.

I love descriptive writing. I’ve always been good at it. Instead of just staying with the characters and having the setting surround them, I had the area take over what was going on in the story. So I jumped straight into the dialogue with the characters and went from there. Best decision I made. It makes me feel invigorated to start again, and the story is coming out better than it did before.

My advice with that situation: if you find that there is too much going on with your story and you cant fix it, just start again. If you feel this story has potential but the draft you have isn’t working, just rewrite it from the beginning.

Then the other story was more of a character story. This one I haven’t quite figured out yet but I feel like I am on the path to fixing it. The story grew from the idea I had for a character. Inspiration from the likes of Scarlet Witch and Dark Phoenix.

I always had this image of an overpowered girl in black, but I didn’t know what angle to go with. Do I want her to be a young girl who can’t control her powers? Or do I want her more in control? All I had was an image of her. I didn’t know who she was. Throughout the years, I saw the rendition of Scarlet Witch and the Dark Phoenix. Dark Phoenix took on the idea of a woman with a dual personality who couldn’t control her darker side. In a way that is interesting but a lot of fans didn’t like that rendition of the character. I danced with the idea of a darker side because I think that was where the character stemmed for me. A dark alter ego of oneself can be just as powerful. But my breakthrough was to go with this dark powerful ethereal entity in the body of a young girl. She isn’t to be reckoned with and she is dangerous. But she is fair and will only fight when she needs to. So I wrote a short little piece of discovery. I wrote to see where this character takes me and I think this one might stick. However, I said that before and this is my sixth attempt at creating a story for this character. So we shall see.

So I had success with Glass House and some possible progress made for the other one. So all in all, a successful writer’s week for me. I just wrote for the last two weeks and worked on my short stories. So I wanted to delve into this idea of that breakthrough you have as a writer. There is no greater feeling than for a story you tried to make work, started to work. I would hit my head against the wall and try to work every angle to these stories. So when one idea sticks and doesn’t fall apart, I’m delighted. An amazing couple of weeks for me. Hope you all have a fantastic day and Ill see ye in the next post.