Part 1.1 Introduction
1 hour
- Write both fact and fiction, discussing the difference
What is fiction?
It is all about characters, so sayeth the course. And to access these characters, we will make the best of what we already have: memories, experiences, desires, and imagination. This course is positioned as “start” writing guidance, so it makes sense to build confidence by acknowledging that anyone with language has the tools to begin.
For those commenters saying that they have never written fiction before, I am intrigued as to what brought them here. Others have had a long-standing desire to write, or a long-lost writing practice, and are using this course as a way to prioritise it.
Ways to Write
The course focuses on character creation as the central skill of story-telling. We begin by recognising that writing usually can’t be done quickly. It’s something you need to live with and return to again and again.
Exercise
Fact and fiction
Write a paragraph (50 to 100 words) containing one fact and three fictitious elements. Then try the reverse – write a paragraph containing three facts and one fictitious element.
My sister lives by the sea, in a pink cottage, but it is too far away for a quick visit. I’m planning to go soon.
When sneaking the fact into the fiction, I wanted to start with the fact, as the grounding for the paragraph, and then make up three things from there. I think the default in fiction is to work with what we know and then reconstruct or embellish it, and that impulse was hard to get away from. I managed to get the fact in half-way through once I had worked out what wasn’t true.
I am a fan of the tennis player Roger Federer and when he is playing a match I sometimes get so stressed I have to turn it off, even though he is near the end of his career, and I want to watch every match he plays from now on.
When sneaking the fiction into the facts, I thought of something that was true and the consequences which followed it, but then just switched the original term (the person) for something fictional but that still worked with those consequences.
Reflection
I agree with the follow-up article that it is hard to distinguish between fact and fiction, because although the fact “happened”, the fictional still needs to be true and possible to be believed. So all I’m looking at is the difference between something that happened and something that didn’t (as far as I know).
We may even imagine things that we don’t realise actually have happened; which reminds me of the disclaimer on films that resemblance to real people or events is coincidental. Perhaps we are not able to imagine much new under the sun.
Also, real-life stories will often seem incredible, too coincidental, too outlandish, even too dramatically satisfying — but they happened.
This difficulty of distinction is the bread-and-butter of successful fiction. Being able create a whole world (all of it a lie, based on truth); being able to make the extraordinary feel real but the ordinary feel interesting; being able to disguise and conceal and reveal facts and lies within a narrative.
And trying to write both fact and fiction — truths and lies — can help you realise the relationship between the two.
This exercise was harder to do than I expected, because things which are true go together – e.g. the sun is shining so the air is warm and the bees are out. It’s difficult to start with a fiction and then switch to fact – e.g. the day is rainy so / the air is warm and the bees are out.
You can write separated details which nobody would identify, but it just turns into a list; my neighbours are a couple and have brown hair and no children.
This would be a good exercise for those writing detective stories, or premises with sleight of hands or partial reveals, or unreliable narrators. It got me thinking about the discipline of concealment.
Give the course a spin yourself!
www.futurelearn.com/courses/start-writing-fiction