Truth In Fiction – WN 020

This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 20: Truth in Fiction.

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps aspiring writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I am your host, Sarah Werner, and I am really excited about today’s podcast episode. I’ve been looking forward to talking about truth and fiction and truth in fiction for a really long time. A couple of years ago, when I was brainstorming ideas for what eventually became the Write Now podcast, I had this list of topics that I wanted to cover, and today’s topic was totally on that list. And so I thought to commemorate my 20th podcast episode, I would go ahead and talk about it today with you. But before I get too far into this very exciting topic, sorry, I’m totally nerding out right now. I received a really lovely handwritten letter from podcast listener, Maggie in Georgia. And Maggie, I won’t share your entire letter here, but I do want to call out a section that really spoke to me and that I think will speak to other listeners as well.

So within Maggie’s letter, she writes, I’ve been reading and listening to a lot of interviews with writers. One such interview with Maya Angelou, that’s included in a collection by the Paris Review called, Women Writers at Work is particularly inspiring. And I’d love to share some of what Maya Angelou said with you. The interview was from 1990 and she talks a bit about where she did her writing. In whatever city or town she happened to be living in, Maya Angelou would rent a hotel room for months at a time. She never slept in the hotel rooms though. She would leave her home at 6:00 AM every morning and begin work at 6:30 when she reached her hotel room, writing furiously until noon. She would then go home and follow her usual routine, not looking at what she’d written until 5:00 PM.

The most valuable thing she said to me was in response to a question about the tools she would endow every writer with. Other than a yellow legal pad, these tools were “Ears. Ears to hear the language, but there’s no one piece of equipment that is most necessary. Courage first.” Thank you, Maggie for your beautiful letter and for sharing those words with us. There’s just so much interesting stuff into that passage that I just read. And I love that Maya Angelou’s favorite writing tools are ears with which to listen and courage with which to act. I think that those two elements really draw and lead us toward not only empathy and true empathy, but an actionable empathy. Empathy is this ability that we have to share and understand the feelings of someone else. And this empathy is one of the keywords that I’m going to talk about when I talk about truth and honesty and the power of fiction. So really just a perfect tie in.

So you may know that in my eight to five day job, I work in marketing. I know, I know. When I graduated from college, I was all like, oh, I have this awesome English major and I’m going to follow truth and beauty to the ends of the earth, and I will never sell out. And I want to tell you that I never actually intended to go into marketing. I just sort of fell into it and realized I was good at it. And the very best part of that is that I am able to do marketing for a good and ethical company. In my capacity as a content strategist, I sort of work on websites a little bit directing how information is architected and stored and accessed and read. But I also work on the other side as well, where we create ads and ghost write blog posts and do what we call content marketing.

And in my position as a content strategist, I am really, really passionate about bringing back those morals that I learned in college of truth and beauty and it works out pretty well. And in fact, I gave a talk recently about honest content or essentially truth in advertising. In that talk, I went on at length about how it is just so increasingly important that advertisers be honest, and that marketers be honest and that bloggers be honest. This is because people are tired of being sold. Gone are the days of the used car salesman. Consumers, that’s you and me, the people who buy stuff, consumers today are educated. We have the internet, we research stuff before we purchase it. We have developed really great lie detectors, or as I often call them, crap detectors. We know when something is insincere. I mean, you’ve felt that before when someone apologizes to you, but they don’t really mean it.

We know when something is off, like when a part in a movie or a play or a TV show is poorly acted, we know that something is off. I think we’ve also become very good at recognizing when something is not real. There are all sorts of websites out there that call out poor Photoshopping techniques. We push that stuff away. We’re tired of it. People want something real. And that’s why you see such popularity with, the Dominoes ad campaign where they’re like, yeah, we made some really bad pizza, but hey, now it’s better. We’re being honest with you. Come try our pizza. Similarly, Dove has been doing a lot of work with its real beauty campaign where instead of hiring models, they use images of average sized women using their products. And it’s gone over very, very well with the public. People want something real, something they can identify with or connect with or understand.

So in my talk, I went into a few examples of how to write for the web and how to write for content marketing and how to write for advertisements in a way that was honest and natural and engaging and clear and most of all, authentic. Authenticity opens you up in a way that makes you vulnerable and in return, it opens up the person who’s reading or watching your advertisement, or reading your blog or whatever it opens them up too and makes them more receptive to your message. Empathy is connection and connection, true connection, is the key to successful marketing. Okay now I know that we’re here to talk about writing and not about marketing, so I promise this will all come together in the end. So there’s this adage that essentially says writers are professional liars. Some writers will kind of say it with a cheeky grin like, “Oh yes, I’m a professional liar. I’m a professional storyteller.”

Much in the same way that my sister, who is a pharmacist, will often jokingly tell us that she is a professional drug dealer. And I guess in some sense that’s accurate. Honestly, I cannot think of a more shallow view of what a writer is and does. And in fact, I would argue that the fiction writer is the immaculate truth teller. I mean, think about why people read. Yes, on the surface. They might read because they’re bored or they might read to escape, but beneath it all, just like with the advertising, people are hungry for connection, especially in fiction. Readers are hungry to empathize and connect and to get lost within a story. They’re hungry for authenticity and they’re hungry for truth. At this point, you’re saying, “Come on, Sarah, you love science fiction. You love stories about space ships and intergalactic travel. And you love fantasy stories about wizards and unicorns. And you love grizzly mysteries where people get murdered by an endless stream of serial killers. And there’s always a detective to bring down the serial killer.”

None of this is true. There are no spaceships, there are no unicorns and serial killers really aren’t that common. Now, to that I say, thank you for crushing my dreams. Not about the serial killers. I meant more about the unicorns and the spaceships. But I would also say that in this case, the facts are not what’s important. I’ll explain what I mean by sharing with you a couple of quotes that I came across in my own writing education. One of the most famous lessons you will ever be given in writing, whether it’s fiction, poetry, biography, your doctoral thesis, whatever it is you’re writing, you will hear the advice to write what you know. I don’t know who was the first person who said that, but it’s very popular and for the most part, it makes a lot of sense.

I mean, if I’m a 30-something woman living in the United States of America, of German and Eastern European descend, I’m not going to be able to sit down and write an authentic story about what it was like growing up in France in the 16600s. I wouldn’t be able to sit down and just right off the top of my head about what it felt like to be a black man living in the 1950s and 60s in the United States, at least not without a lot of research and interviewing. And so to that extent, the whole write what you know adage has merit, but I don’t believe you have to write what you know, or that you are somehow restrained to only writing about things that you have particularly experienced. I don’t think that’s true and in fact, I know it’s not true.

Ernest Hemingway once said about writing, all you have to do is write one true sentence, write the truest sentence that you know, so is he saying, write what you know, and only what you know? No, he’s talking about truth and about interpreting and conveying truth in a way that is important to our culture. I’ll elaborate on that with another quote from Hemingway. He says, “From all things that you know, and from all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation, but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive.” This is what I’m getting at when I talk about the importance of truth in fiction. The art and beauty of fiction does not simply lie in the faithful retelling of events. That’s called a diary. 6:30 AM, woke up. 6:35 AM, went into the kitchen, removed a pan from the bottom of the stove, cracked two eggs and began to fry them. 6:40 AM, finished eating eggs. 6:41 AM, brushed teeth.

If that’s your story, I am very sorry, but nobody cares about it. Remember why we read fiction, we read fiction to connect. That is why writing what you know is simply not enough. American writer, Timothy O’Brien wrote a book about the Vietnam War that you may or may not have read. It’s called, The Things They Carried. It’s a collection of war stories or vignettes. And some people may enjoy these stories more than others. They are violent and both beautiful and terrible at the same time. But in one of the short stories or vignettes, O’Brien sort of breaks the fourth wall. And what I mean by that is, he stops telling a story and he just comes out and starts talking to you as a reader. He acknowledges that he is Tim O’Brien and that he is writing down these stories. He also says that perhaps not everything within these stories is 100% factually true.

He doesn’t specifically say what was true and what was not, but he does say that he says the things he says in these stories to evoke the same emotions from you that he felt while he was in that situation. What makes an instance or an event truly story worthy is not the instance or the event itself, but the participant’s interpretation or emotional response. For me, I truly believe that that is where the power of a story lies. The power of the story comes from a shared experience. You can’t truly share an experience if your interpretation of something is different from the other person’s interpretation of it.

And so when I say, I woke up at 6:30 AM in my diary entry, one person may interpret that as oh, good for her, she’s an early riser. She’s getting a start to the day. Another person may interpret that as, oh, I’d feel terrible at that moment and I would need at least 10 cups of coffee to get going. And yet another person may say, she should be getting up at five 30, if she really wants to be a writer. And yet another person might say, my husband used to wake me up every morning at 6:30 and now he’s gone. Those are four very different experiences for one factual sentence.

As a writer, that’s not effective storytelling. I’m not sharing an experience. I’m not connecting with my audience and I’m not getting an empathetic or authentic connection or reaction from them. Remember why readers love to read. When Tim O’Brien acknowledges that certain things that he said in some of his stories were not 100% factually true, but rather said to emotionally engage you and to make you, as the reader, feel the same way that he felt in those moments, to make a true connection with you. He says, “I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story truth is truer than happening truth.” He later goes on to say, “That’s what fiction is for. It’s for getting at the truth. When the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.” And he’s talking about the whole truth and nothing but.

We write to connect and to communicate. When we have an idea for a scene, we want to make sure that we’re conveying not only that the walls are beige and the carpet is green, but that there’s a tension in the room and this is what it feels like and this is how the people are looking at each other and this is how they’re feeling as they look at each other. We, human beings, are deeply empathetic and in tune to emotion. We’re social creatures, it’s just how we’re built. And we crave that in its truest and purest form in literature, in stories. One of my favorite parts of Stephen King’s famous book on writing is a section in the chapter called, What Writing Is, where he says simply that writing is telepathy.

To illustrate this, he says that he’s writing in 1997 and you are reading in whatever year it happens to be and he describes a scene with a red tablecloth and a rabbit with a number eight drawn on it. He goes on to say, not a six, not a four, not 19.5. It’s an eight. This is what we’re looking at and we all see it. I didn’t tell you, you didn’t ask me. I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We’re not even in the same year together, let alone the same room, except we are together. We’re close. We’re having a meeting of the minds. I sent you a table with a red cloth on it, a cage, a rabbit, and the number eight in blue ink. You got them all, especially that eight, we’ve engaged in an act of telepathy.

I think that’s such a wonderful illustration of how and why stories are so powerful. And the connection when we read, between a writer and a reader, is more than just a connection. It’s, it’s not one way. It’s not one-sided. It’s two-sided. It’s a meeting of the minds. It’s telepathy. When readers can connect and engage and empathize and envision the story with the emotions and the world that you’ve imagined, we have shared experience, and that is truth. And that is the power of storytelling. So if you’re writing science fiction or fantasy or anything fictional, you can still tell the truth in a way that truly matters. You can convey a real human experience, even if you’re not purely writing what you know, you can still write things that are true, that emotionally resonate and that speak to ages old universals. So write what is true and write it in a way that is authentic and earnest and natural and genuine and human. And your readers will truly connect with what you’re writing.

This week’s book of the week is, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. As I mentioned earlier, it’s a collection of war stories essentially, or vignettes, and they’re very visceral and kind of disturbing. And if it doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, it’s probably not your cup of tea, but he has some truly lovely insights about what it means to be a writer and to tell a story. And he is much more articulate than I am when talking about truth and story truth. And I would earnestly encourage you to give it a read if you haven’t. You will find a link to that book and probably some other stuff as well in the show notes for today’s episode, episode 20, Truth in Fiction.

On a bit of a lighter note, I was thinking about truth telling in my own writing over the weekend. I had the chance to finally do some creative writing and I was thinking about truth and about making my words truthful and my message truthful in the midst of I’m currently writing a sort of urban fantasy adventure mystery thing. Isn’t it awkward to talk about your own work? I could talk for days about other people’s work and how much I love books, but then you ask me to tell you about what I’m writing about and I’m like, “Oh, I’m so intensely uncomfortable right now.” So I’m writing this vaguely futuristic minimalist post-punk urban fantasy, noir type thing. And there’s a lot of stuff that has never happened to me, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not true.

There’s a relationship between siblings that is drawn from my own experience with my siblings. There are hints of other things that have happened that have happened to me in my life. I think at the end of the day and I’m sure that much smarter people than I have said this, but I think that everything you write is just a little bit autobiographical. I think we can’t help it. I think part of us is compelled to weave our own story into the stories that we tell. And that’s good, that should happen. And so I’m wondering, have you picked up on this in your own writing, whether you’re writing fiction, nonfiction, poetry, cookbooks, whatever it is. Have you noticed that one of the characters has reactions very similar to your own reactions?

Have you seen your best friend or your sister or your spouse in one of the characters that you’re writing? I always think it’s so interesting, once I’m finished writing to kind of go through and dissect and say, “Oh, geez, I didn’t mean to write this person into my story, but I guess I did.” Truth in fiction. So let me know about your experiences with truth in fiction. You can shoot me an email at hello@sarahwerner.com. That’s H-E-L-L-O at S-A-R-A-H W-E-R-N-E-R .com. You can also go to my website and navigate to the contact page and just fill out my little form there. There’s a space for your name, your email, and a message. I’m not sure how long of a message it will let you type, but go for it. You can connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, LO.

I guess what I’m trying to tell you is I’m not hiding from you. If you want to get in touch with me, it’s very easy to do that. Just look for the Write Now podcast at sarahwerner.com. I truly do love hearing from people. So I would absolutely love to hear from you. Also, if you are listening to this podcast on iTunes and you would like to help my podcast reach the ears of even more listeners, you can help do that by giving me a five star review and written reviews, in addition to just clicking the five stars, written reviews help everything go a little further as well. So thank you in advance for doing that so very much.

Other folks who help out tremendously with making this podcast a possibility are my lovely, wonderful Patreon supporters. Special thanks go out to rad dudes, Sean Locke and Andrew Coons, as well as to official podcast caffeinator, Rebecca Werner. Thank you all so very much. I would also like to thank the people in my life who just keep me inspired to keep going, including my husband, Tim, my good friend, Mark Henderson, my mentor, Melissa, my fellow mastermind group members, Peter Aadahl, and Rohn Gibson, my dear friend, Joanna and so many others. I may or may not have included you all in some way in something that I’ve written over the years. Most of all, thank you for listening. This is your podcast. You are the reason that I do this.

My dream is for this podcast to inspire you to think about writing and think differently about writing and find the inspiration that you need to make your own dreams come true. Sorry if that sounds a little cheesy, but I just love doing this so much and I’m so glad that you’ve decided to listen.

And with that, this has been the Write Now podcast, the podcast that helps aspiring writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I am Sarah Werner and I can’t wait for you to share the truth of what you’ve written with the world.