What is the difference between fact and fiction?

Shelagh got me thinking when she contrasted her work with that of her husband’s in another tread. 'Possibility' is not one of the differences between fact and fiction because fact is often more incredible than fiction. I don’t think 'imagination' is either because the good scientist and non fiction author must be equally imaginative. Compare Leonardo de Vinci's technical drawings with his fine art and tell me which one is the more imaginary. One is 'order'. if the author chooses we can predict things with confidence in the fictitious world. A related difference is 'comfort' the world of fiction can save us from the nasty world of facts. What do you think?

It seems to me that good literary fiction is never comfortable, and has a certain amount of nastiness in it. Fiction nearly always involves structures like plotting and characterization, conflict and climax that are not necessarily a part of non-fiction writing.

It's a good question. I posted recently in the Writer's Cafe, an entry about a non-fiction book I had been reading, that was as much a page-turner as a fictional mystery. I like to think that my non-fiction book, A Myth in Action, which told the story of Audie Murphy using mythological story patterns, kept the readers as involved as a fictional novel. Both of those books had plots, characters, and conflict. But the people and events happened to be real.

I've read fiction books that were designed to read and look like diaries or news reports or memoirs, but were completely fabricated.

It simply boils down, I think, to the fact that fiction is not true(pun intended). That doesn't mean it isn't real. The best fiction seems very real, even in the fantasy genres.


You might want to make a distinction between technical non-fiction like textbooks, how-to manuals, and scientific research on the one hand, with biography and true-life narratives on the other.

Ann

What I think is that any good story has a basis in reality. The facts can be what one wants them to be in fiction. In stories like the one's that I write, there is some experience that connects the reader in a logical way to the reality of the animal's story so that they see themselves there in the story.. The voices of the animals, I try to keep that real. I hope that the voices of the animals give voice in a way to the child who hears them or reads the story. What dreams and visions are in a child's mind before they are squelched by reality.

It is all in the eye of the mind with fiction. The best writers of fiction are those who live and look out that inner eye when they write.

Love,
Betty

Love,
Betty

Ann & Betty. I think you both expressed well how they can be different, yet relate.
Historical fiction uses fact with embellishments. It would be difficult to write a story that is so totally fiction that there would be no correlation to things that exist. A good story has some basis for reality.

Great remarks. I love writing historical fiction as I love research and indeed I use imagination, but base it on facts.

I studied maps from the 1860s and had a big problem with the placement of the Missouri River. So I asked what I thought was a question that would get me laughed out of the historical building, "Could the river have moved?"

And the historian didn't laugh. Indeed the river was moved, to make it deeper for shipping.

Ah, the things we can learn.

Carol

Yes some great comments thanks to all.

Abe ‘It would be difficult to write a story that is so totally fiction that there would be no correlation to things that exist.’

I think it would be impossible. Kant established categorically that our view of the world is constrained by the structure of our mind and senses. Wittgenstein added how we are contained by our language also.

A novel written by an alien would be impossible to translate, the alien’s physics text book might be translatable (some argue that some pages of its biology book also). If I remember my Wittgenstein correctly he would hold that a novel written by a dog would be commensurable.

Maybe we should get zizban's opinion on this topic?

As a dog or as an alien?

As somebody very ambivalent about fiction and non-fiction.

i.e. doesn't know the difference between the two.