I use a significant amount of data in my work and my co-workers expect me to know all the relevant statistics of progress towards our goals at any given moment. I often joke that I could be making those statistics up and no one would ever know. The other thing I frequently say when questioned about data is that I write fiction, so I would not trust anything I say.
That raises a very real question: as a writer of fiction, what is my relationship to the truth? I call myself a storyteller, not a biographer or historian and that defines my commitment. I must be committed to the truth of that singular narrative and the characters in the narrative in order to create compelling fiction that feels 'true' to the reader.
I remember being at a James Bond movie when I was younger--maybe in the nineties?--and we had just gotten through the final action sequence of the movie and someone sitting nearby blurted out "That wasn't real." I laughed out loud. Was he implying that all of the other over-the-top action sequences were real? It was James Bond! None of it was real. At the same time, the story tellers who crafted the film would have been horrified to have someone call that scene out. It meant the Truth of the world they had created had broken down.
I work very hard when I am crafting fictional worlds to bless them with Truth. If I'm writing about something in a historical time period, I'll research it; if I'm writing about a place I've never been, I'll track down a map of that city from the era about which I am writing. But those facts can never outweigh the truth of the narrative itself. No one will ever know or care if I add a street or building to a map of a city from 1939, but they will know if the narrative itself doesn't hold up.
Readers have told me time and again that they loved the twists and turns in my books, in part because they were unable to guess what was going to happen, but also because nothing felt like it was put there just to surprise. I always say the same thing. Once I turn the characters in a novel lose on their world, it is up to them to act. I don't force them to do things that I want them to do. I realize that sounds... weird? I'm the one typing. But I learned, early in my writing career, that when I force decisions on my characters I'm going to get to a dead end and have to throw out chapters of material to let the characters evolve as they need to evolve.
We live in a world where truth has become an endangered and precious thing. In the worlds I create, it remains sacrosanct. And I don't abide cruelty, even in fiction.
Win a free Kindle edition of Love: a novel of grief and desire: I work with Reader's Favorite on the Kindle book giveaway. If you go to readersfavorite.com/book-giveaway you can sign up for the monthly giveaway. You can scroll through the list of giveaways (over 500 each month) or sort the list by title or author to find Love: a novel of grief and desire and put your name in for this month's drawing. Good luck
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