fiction

So after Friday's class, I started thinking about the point Zach made about hoax photos. Hoax photos are obviously fiction in that they aren't real, but they are different than fiction because people actually want to believe them and sometimes do. Like Zach said, a fictional character like Sherlock Holmes is understood to be fake, and the reader normally has no want or need to believe in his true existence. In the case of hoax photos, however, many people seem to have an innate desire to believe in them, so much so that the desire translates to acceptance. I think the difference here lies in presentation, subject matter and medium. In a novel, for instance, characters and events are not normally presented as "real." The author uses the characters and events to tell a story but makes no effort to prove or suggest their actual existence. In the case of hoax photos, however, photographers claim to have captured something actually in existence and pass it off as such. What further strengthens belief is the medium, itself, because photography is understood to capture actual moments in time, giving photos more credibility than written accounts of something's existence.  read more »

We discussed in class the idea of fiction and non-fiction and how elements of each are present in both. In Avatars of Story, Ryan writes, “In the past few decades, the boarder between fiction and nonfiction has been the site of numerous violations which have caused, if not the spilling of blood, at lest the spilling of ink.” There as been some controversies as to how much truth goes into fiction, or how much fiction can go into a nonfiction.
This idea made me think of an Ernest Hemingway quote: “All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened…” The idea of a true fiction. I believe that Hemingway was referring to the idea that the author has to tell the truth about his story, even if it is not real.  read more »

I'm not a huge fan of anime, but sometimes watching a Japanese cartoon in Japanese (with subtitles, of course) can really make you think.
I recently saw the movie Paprika, an anime movie that won some sort of Oscar, and it was amazing. The plot mainly focused around the differences and relationships between the imagination (dreams) and reality.
In the movie, there were several dreams that recurred in the minds of the main characters, with many different conflicts happening in each of them, until finally, the dream took over even the reality of the city in which the main characters were living, leading to a final battle in which dreams and reality are pitted against each other to see which one wins out.
Just in case you haven't seen it and you want to, I won't tell you the end, but the movie definitely made m think, especially in relationship to Photopia and Ryan's discussion of fiction and nonfiction.  read more »

I discussed in my last post how Doom forces me into a close relationship with it. I feel as if I'm going to Hell, with a chainsaw.

In all my workshop writing classes, we discuss immersion as well, but in a different form. In literature, there are levels of interaction. Think about it: you have first-person narration, sometimes second-person narration (read Lorrie Moore's "Self-Help"), and almost always third-person narration. As first-person, you are the character. Second-person, you are a character interacting with others. (Also, it's important to note the level of immersion with second-person writing. You will not find a novel in second-person. It is too demanding on the reader.)  read more »

Crawford mentions that fiction is an "untruth that is not a lie." Well, to answer perfectly for all situations: sort of.

Fiction is a lie. But it's a lie without the negative connotations of "lying." Fiction is art, it's entertainment, it's goal is to communicate and evoke emotion. Creative writing students, including me, will tell you that we're all liars. In fact, what makes us good at writing is that we're good liars.

What separates a simple lie, from fiction, is credibility. Dickens describes the disheveled mansion of Miss Haversham in order to lend her credibility. To make her, and the "lie" that he's painting, more believable. Everyone knows the lie: "My dog ate my homework," but if you add certain details, it can sound more realistic. "My dog, I swear he's blind from cataracts and, well--you know--flea bitten old guy, he didn't know the difference..." etc. etc.  read more »