A book should be mainly true in order to be considered non-fiction. Although, it can have a few things that are a bit stretched to make it more interesting or to add a different twist to something. I’m not saying go in and add a high-speed car chase to make it more interesting, because if you have to add that to make it interesting, you probably shouldn’t be writing a non-fiction piece. Because your life’s boring.
Half-truths are okay, but don’t call them a memoir or an autobiography. Call it fiction. If you have a story that would be good if you could change it, just change it. Does it matter if it’s called a memoir or not? You can say in an interview that part of it is true and then you’ll have even more fame. But if you say the whole things true and it’s not, Oprah probably will yell at you. I’m just saying.
It does matter that they bent the truth when they told their stories, because people like them because they are true. If you only read a story because you want to hear an inspiring story of recovery, and you read a story of recovery that’s not true, it’s kind of irritating. They lied about theirs so that they could sell and get money, which is dumb because you will probably get caught and have to apologies to the human race.
We don’t need lines between genres, but it helps the readers distinguish what they might like, verse what they will probably hate. I don’t think it is necessary to label something because we don’t label people, so why should we label books? David Shields is right when he says that the line between fiction and non-fiction should be obliterated, but he is wrong to write a book using other people’s hard work, without giving them a citation that the reader is not advised to rip out. They put hard work into writing what they did, and here you go taking it and making money off it. He did no real work unless you consider the fact that he might get a cramp in his hand from copying and pasting so many excerpts.
i agree with you about David Shields
ReplyDeleteYes! If you need to add a lot, or embellish, then don't write nonfiction, write fiction, because your life is boring and you haven't done anything worth putting in a book.
ReplyDeleteNon-fiction cannot be somewhat true. People can argue and say that a memior can, but non-fiction as a whole genre cannot. We wouldn't be able to trust any information.
ReplyDeleteI agree with how you said if you have a half-truth just call it fiction, that way people won't get mad when you tell them that you embellished half the story.
ReplyDeleteI agree because when you half-truth something and someone finds it hurts their feelings knowing they were directly lied too.
ReplyDeleteOh Leah, i miss history (i don't miss science not even you could make that interesting :P, i think i sound weird now.) Anyways. You made me laugh and i agree until you mentioned genre labels. We need fiction and nonfiction at least to tell if something is true or not, or whether to yell at the liar or not.
ReplyDeleteI agree partly untrue stories should be labeled as such
ReplyDeleteyeah it should be mainly true and partly true should be labeled partly true
ReplyDeleteI like how you talked about writing a partly true fiction novel. The author and book probably would recieve more attention if people thought it was all fiction but some of it was true, as opposed to the disapproval that would be recieved if a non-fiction book was partly fake. They are the same thing in actuality, but how you label them creates the readers opinion.
ReplyDeleteI think if there is a half-truth book it should be "based on a true story"
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