Fiction lies, technically speaking.
I often joke and say I get paid to lie. The characters aren't real. The events didn't happen. The places, in many cases, exist only in the architecture of my imagination. A novel is, by definition, made up.
And yet.
Readers regularly describe fictional experiences in the language of truth. That character understood me. That story changed how I see things. That book told me something real about myself. We don't say those things about things that are simply false. We say them about things that have gotten somewhere true by an unexpected route.
That's the paradox at the heart of fiction, and it's one I find endlessly valuable. A story can be factually invented and emotionally, spiritually, humanly true at the same time. The invented surface carries something real underneath, and what the reader receives is the real thing, not the invention.
This is why I've never felt any tension between writing fiction and caring deeply about truth. The fiction is the vehicle. The truth is the destination. A well-crafted story doesn't lead readers away from reality. It leads them more deeply into it, through a door that would never have opened otherwise.
In this case, disguise isn't deception. It's strategy and grace rolled into one. It's the reason a made-up story can tell you something true about your own life that no amount of straightforward instruction could have ever reached.
Has a work of fiction ever told you something true? Something you recognized as real the moment you encountered it? What was it? I'd love to hear in the comments.
No comments:
Post a Comment