Stranger Than Fiction: Using Personal Experience

Have you ever played the game, Three Truths and a Lie? It's one of my favorite getting-to-know-you games because it requires people to think of three true things about them that are so unique they seem unlikely, and it teaches you something about how they lie. Will the lie be obvious or so detailed, it blends right into the truths? But what's really remarkable about playing this game is the discovery that TRUTH really is STRANGER THAN FICTION.

For instance, my three truths always include these: 

I survived a plane crash when I was two years old.
I went skydiving in Canada, and I jumped twice.
I never saw snow in real life until I was eighteen and went away to college.

My lie would always be somewhat lame. I'd exaggerate the number of kids I have (say 8 instead of 5) or say I've been to Hawaii (sadly, still a lie). It turns out I'm terrible at lying. I guess there are worse things! But each person's lie is true for someone else. One of my favorite friends in my neighborhood does, in fact, have 8 kids. And two of my siblings have lived in Hawaii. Did they fly me out to see them? Of course not. Everyone who lives in Hawaii is broke. But am I bitter?

So when we are writing fiction, basically telling lies we hope are convincing enough to convey ideas and themes, we actually rely on an ample portion of the truth, whether that truth belongs to us personally or not. If I were to write about Hawaii, my family's experiences there would factor into my narrative. If I were to write about a 19-year-old girl about to jump out of a small airplane that resembled the small airplane she crashed in with her family when she was 2 years old, I would draw on my own anxieties from that experience.

For this reason, I find that the best UNIVERSAL advice for good writing is this: live.

Living gives us scope and empathy, the ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes that's essential to good fiction. In the absence of time traveling to China in the 1960s, however, you may find it preferable to read someone else's truth. Memoir should have a respected place on every fiction writer's bookshelves. Memoir is great writing because it's true and that truth is stranger than fiction.

The last memoir I read was Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang. If I hadn't been told it is a true story, I would not believe it. The happenings are so alien to my ideas of proper government and community action that it strains credibility. Why would people act that way?

Memoir brings us to the heart of all good fiction: the WHY, the motive of our heroes and supporting characters. Why would his sister betray him after spending all their childhood mothering him? Why would her lover kill himself on the eve of their anniversary? Why would the pull of glory be so strong it could make a young child change her name and give up a rich cultural heritage to act on a foreign stage?

And in every answer there is room for still more questions.

That's what makes the truth so much stranger than fiction. How do you infuse your stories with the clarion ring of strange truth?

A Valentine By Any Other Name

Source

Holidays mean different things to different people. I remember a couple of years into our marriage, my husband demonstrating this in an entertaining, slightly obnoxious way.

Our first child was nearly a year old, and we were discussing the month's schedule. I brought up February 14th as being a special day, recalling with pleasure that this was our child's due date, though he'd been born a week earlier. The other special thing about it is, of course, that it's Valentine's Day. So imagine my surprise when he said, "Oh yeah, that's the day our lease is up on the Saturn Ion."

Um, what? (As I'm writing this, he is looking over my shoulder to remind me that he was joking. Okay, Bill, whatever.)

So romantic, right? I still give him a hard time about it all these years later. But the truth is that returning our car and deciding what to do for our family vehicle in the future took up a lot of space in his mind. Just as our baby's due date had taken up a lot of space in mine.

If you asked my mom about that date, its importance would be her mother. My grandma was born on Valentine's Day, and for every birthday that was a sweet conjunction for her entire family.

Recently I met a woman who was excited to do her daughter's vicarious work in the temple. Her daughter had led a rough life, ending in an early death, so going to the temple on her behalf was particularly soul-healing for her mother. The date for this temple work was undetermined and seemed to keep getting hindered by something or other. Finally, the date that seemed to line up was Valentine's Day. For my friend, this was especially sweet because her daughter had always loved Valentine's Day. It had been a special day in which her father always left a Valentine on her pillow, and in her future relationships, that tradition continued, a cycle of love and wholeness. To think that her daughter had, from beyond the veil, chosen this date, added healing symbolism to the occasion.

For some people, Valentine's Day is about commercialism or the bitterness of seeing happy couples. (I think we all have to deal with this feeling at least one February 14th in our lives,) For them, Valentine's Day hardly ranks as a holiday at all.

The difference between a holiday being a point of rebirth and reconnection or being about emptiness and fakery... is the person. Is the day an opportunity or a reminder? Does it mark the occasion of birth, death, or union? Well, that all depends on who you ask.

If you happen to be writing an elevator scene about a group of strangers who have never met before, or co-workers who often share this ride in silence, think about what THIS day means to them. Is it the anniversary of their first date with the wife? Or the anniversary of their brother's death? How recent were these original events? How does time impact the state of mind and therefore the motivation of your main character?

This topic is particularly fascinating to me because you cannot run from a day. Even if you are all alone in the world, you can't simply forget that it's Christmas, or Valentine's Day, or Halloween. How will your people meet the day?

Happy Writing Weekend! And Happy Valentine's Day, whatever it may mean to you!

Accuracy in Art: Detail in Fiction

“Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.” -Picasso

I just spent two hours trying to find the right one-way street in downtown L.A. for the swing dancing club my characters discover. It needed to be busy with lots of big buildings around, a convenience store or gas station around the corner, and... well, I really wanted the building to have a mustard yellow door.

LOL. Why did I want to find a real place like this when I could have just made one up?

I have no idea. Actually, I do. It has something to do with Forks.

I came to the conclusion at about 3 o' clock this morning that it doesn't matter as much as I thought it did at 1:00am. Sure, some degree of realism is cool because it makes the reader feel like they could really be there. Like the cranky train guy in Harry Potter when Harry's like, "Where's platform nine and three quarters?" You gotta have a cranky train guy.

I think sleep deprivation may have had something to do with my decision to spend so much time on something so trivial, but it's also that I'm hearing all the time that we should make things as real as possible, when, really, it's probably safer for everyone involved if we make more things up.

After all, authors have been sued for making a real place of business the scene of a fictional murder. And who knows if whatever dance club I eventually might have found (in another five hours of research) even wanted to host my underage characters for a night of raucous swing-dancing and spirit-whisperering. (It's complicated.)

So maybe realism is a bit overrated. Monet was pretty popular. Some people even like Picasso. And awesome writers like Dan Brown and Vince Flynn always lose me when they start giving me a Google-esque lesson on stealth plane engine components or White House floor plans. Just saying.

What details do you think an author really should verify in a fictional tale? And what things are we better off just dreaming?


(random bold-type brought to you by 3 in the morning)