Comments on: Separating Fact from Fiction

by: Gwendolen Gross

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:28:27 +0000

Love this! I admit, even though I write fiction, I still sometimes can’t remember whether something I read was in a novel or an article and maybe just once or twice (a year? a month?) confuse fact and fiction. Not as a writer though. Thanks for your (as always) eloquent take on the topic!!
GG

by: S William Shaw

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 01:02:36 +0000

When I’m not doing children’s fiction, my characters are almost always based on one of my personalities

by: Jonathon Howard

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 18:42:28 +0000

You are so right about people assuming a writer’s writing is somehow intricately linked to her own personal life. In my first writing workshop, after submitting my story, hearing the verbal critiques, I got back all the copied manuscripts. I was amazed by all the comments made by virtual strangers, people I had only met weeks ago, asking when this happened to me, and why was I so upset with my life?! The story was a piece of angsty teenage venting, I was attempting to write for the young adult market… But, it certainly wasn’t my story…

by: thea

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 16:02:54 +0000

i just read a fictional something with a quote in which the man’s mother whispers to him on her death bed: “always trust a stranger, because it’s the people closest to you that always let you down.” It’s my (my, as in the fictional characters that i’ve created) strangers that really end up living up to who they are supposed to be, as opposed to some real life characters!!! i also remember taking a creative writing class and, of course, some guy INSISTED my story MUST be autobiogaphical, which was SO not the case. But Walter Mosley, in a great article entitled “This Year You Write Your Novel” in the (August ‘07) O Magazine said that when you write, “The story you tell, the characters you present, will all have dark sides to them. If you want to write believable fiction, you will have to cross over the line of your self-restraint and revel in the words and ideas that you would never express in your everyday life.” I guess the trick here is to translate that concept to an acceptable answer to those people who ask questions about how close to real life the characters in your story are. Food for thought. Thanks, WU

by: Therese Walsh

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 14:56:13 +0000

I’ve thought about this a lot lately, and I don’t think my characters are even loosely based on real people. Themes those people might be connected to, yes, but not real people.

But folks believe what they want to believe. I guess it’s a part of the reality-TV world we’re living in that they imagine drama in every dusty nook.

by: Kathleen Bolton

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 14:05:47 +0000

The funniest story I’d ever heard of regarding readers thinking that fiction books were loosely disguised biographies was the effort a fan of Margaret Mitchell’s went to finding Tara. They combed all the rural areas of Georgia trying to find the likely place. Finally they wrote Margaret Mitchell, and she wrote them back saying, “nope, I made the whole thing up.”

But to this day, folks still drive around trying to locate the unlocatable Tara.