When a Novel is 98% True and 2% Fictional

James Frey's Million Little Pieces is probably mostly true, with some dramatic embellishment. His work was marketed as a memoir, which nearly destroyed his reputation. Still, if the publishers had done what he wanted initially--to call it a novel--he probably wouldn't have sold as many copies, but nobody would have griped. I'm sure almost any non-genre novel from the past 100 years or so has at least a hint of autobiography.

He sort of made Oprah look like a total toolbox, though. That was hilarious.

I can relate to this idea - I know that tons of what I'm aiming to write about comes directly from things in my past, if not direct experiences then at least from what I thought and how I felt about things that happened.

The question in my mind is how much to fictionalize these events, or if it is even possible to do so and still write effectively. For instance, some of my background experiences relate to a particular time in a particular country - not national or political events, but to things that happened to other people at the time and which impacted my protag (me) emotionally and informed not only my worldview but also my actions later on ... but if I were to fictionalize this completely and set the whole thing within a different time / place / culture, would it ring as true? Would it work?

I started my nano thinking with a very simple premise - a single idea sparked by a TV show - and it then morphed into what it is now - a story deeply embedded in my own past although the protag isn't ME today.

It's a fine line, isn't it?

"The first draft of anything is shit. "
Ernest Hemingway

Capote started a terrible trend. He wasn't true enough to call it journalism and he wasn't imaginative to write actual fiction, so he flubbed it. Having said that, many writer's first works are more or less autobiographical. I think that comes from creative writing teachers saying write what you know. I would say, write what you don't know. Writing is thinking, and the beauty about literary fiction is that readers don't mind taking off ramps into explorations about all sorts of things. If you are going to write fiction, then make it real fiction. Fiction can be just as real as the actual.

The first thing you should ask yourself (if your going to be doing literary fiction, anyway) is "do I have something to say?" If the answer to this is yes, go from there. If not, write romance and make money.

I guess what you would be referring to is Creative Non-fiction? Also known as Literary Non fiction?

But NANO considers Literary as being within their rules of fiction. So I guess if you are writing anything that is beyond the truth, even if it is based on true life accounts, than it is fiction?

A movie comes to mind here, " Fear nad loathing in las vegas"

based on true accounts, but obviously the drug influences makes the reality different for the ones on drugs.

You will have to forgive me. It is midnight and I am attempting my outline with 3 days until NANO starts!

My novel is based on my experiences, and although the outline I have written is pretty much 100% true to my story, I will be adding fictional elements when I start writing. A novel based on true life but listed as fiction gives the author more freedom to make things more interesting. Also, personally, if anyone reads what I write, I want to keep them guessing as to what is real and what came from my head. (And I wouldn't always want to admit what is actually true.)

Semi-autobiographical fiction isn't a category? That's what I'm calling mine.

The overall plot is fictional; the episodes are based on true periods in my life; the individual experiences are about 50% from experience and hearsay, and 50% made up based on things I've heard.

Lots of first books are semi-autobiographical. The reason is that you have to get all that stuff out before you move on. That's why I'm doing mine during NaNo- to get it over with. If I'm lucky, my life has been interesting enough to make a novel out of it. If not, well it's down on paper and I can move forward.

Wasn't Down and Out in Paris and London more or less autobiographical? Yes. I looked it up. It's a fictionalized autobiography and was published as such. The Dubliners. A Farewell to Arms. Mine will be more fictional but I'm not going to hide that it's basically my semi-autobiographical first novel.

a recent example of this would be tao lin's "shoplifting from american apparel" which he purports to be 97% true and 3% fiction, so you know, eerily close to the percentages you chose. here's some quotes from a recent interview in the stranger (alt weekly in seattle) about why he chose the path he did:

How come you write novels, then, instead of memoirs and autobiographies? Why do you choose to write as a novelist?

I still do move stuff around, and I guess with a memoir I wouldn't be free to do that. I edit it down a lot, and I model how I edit on novels I like, not on memoirs. And also, with all the novelists I like, it's assumed that the main character is the author.

You said you edit conversations down a lot, and I guess I saw a lot of terseness to your conversations, which to me gave the book a sense of ennui, but you disagreed with that. Do you then feel these are the most essential part of the conversations you're bringing up? Were they sitting in silence a lot? Or was there more going on because of editing?

That's interesting. To me, I feel like the conversations I included were ones were the characters are connecting. So I guess it's a reflection of how much the main character talks, which is not that much.

i dunno if any of that helps but i found it interesting to model what is essentially a memoir in a much more 'novelistic' way.

things get more complicated when you're older, before you know it you're somebody's soldier, you get a gun and name it after a girlfriend ...

Jack Kerouac immediately comes to mind when I read your post. He calls what he wrote novels, but really they are barely veiled memoirs. Heck, you can usually guess who all the characters really are.

Another author you might relate to is Tim O'Brien in The Things They Carried. In that case, his book kind of leads the reader into thinking it's nonfiction, but when he came to talk at my college, he said he made a bunch of stuff up.

To me it sounds like you're aiming for creative non-fiction, where you write about what you feel is true rather than what is necessarily factually truth. I still consider that non-fiction, because really, what's true to the author is the actual truth.

Here's an awesome quote you might enjoy.
"Trust the writing, not the writer, for the writer as an individual is likely to be a bloody liar." - D.H. Lawrence.

I was going to mention Kerouac, but frostyferret has already done so. Another author who wrote what's generally called "autobiograpical fiction" was Henry Miller, who wrote Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, The Rosy Crucifixion, and several other novels which were really just his life story. He didn't even bother to change his name; he only changed the names of the other characters. I highly recommend him, though (and Kerouac), because it was largely his work that inspired me to stop being lazy and be the writer I always wanted to be.

it all ends in tears anyway

In Search of Lost Time, and The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, are semi-autobiographical
...

The truth is not always true. Have you read The Things They Carried?
Truth and fiction aren't synonymous. If the fictional aspect of it enhances the nonfiction truth, I'd say go for it as nonfiction. There are plenty of memoirs that have been published as nonfiction that weren't necessarily true to life.

I would put EAT, PRAY, LOVE in this category. All non-fiction, told as a literary novel. And very successfully.

lavender blue

My wrimo novel features characters who are basically my friend,s family and peers but with different names. I've decided that unless I get it published I wont let anyone read it, but if it gets published, screw it I'm published!

I'm in this boat, too. My novel is based on some true life experiences. I'm using real life as a jumping off place, and I"ll see where it takes me. I definitely won't make the same mistake as James Frey and call it a memoir. When I get to editing phase, I will remove anything too recognizable. If it gets published, people who know me might be able see themselves in my characters. My MLC is actually a composite of several people.

Thomas Wolfe (Look Homeward, Angel and other novels) wrote fictionalized autobiography. He was an effusive writer and one of my first loves. Although his books were presented as fiction, the characters recognized themselves post-publication. Ironically, because of the fictionalized nature, these real life characters had a love-hate relationship with Wolfe.

I'm also writing something along the lines of fictionalized autobiography. However, the thing is - if I never state that the work is autobiographical in nature, then it is assumed to be fiction. That's the difference between autobiography and fictionalized autobiography.

Just as another angle on this topic - I'm a poet. One of the "rules" regarding poetry is that the speaker of the poem is never regarded as representing the poet. In other words, don't mistake the content of a poem for the reality of the poet. I see novels in the same way. Unless the author specifically states that their work is autobiographical, then readers should approach the content as fiction. It all depends upon how you present your work. If you want it received as fiction, then don't announce it as autobiographical.

If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.

i'd hardly say mine is autobiographical, but if it were a movie, they could probably get away with "inspired by true events" somewhere in the trailer. it helps that my narrator is turning out more and more unreliable, so he's prone to just completely make shit up as we go.

"the difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."
- mark twain

My novel is heavily based in true events - in fact, most of it is a record of interactions between this person I knew and myself. The ending however, will be entirely fictional. This is because the relationship between the two of us never had a closure, it just fizzled away. The ending will be to give a sense of finality to closing the book on this incident that was emotionally burdensome for quite a while.

NaNo '09 - Playing With Lions

"Art is a lie that makes us realize Truth." - Pablo Picasso

NaNoWriMo is about "anything goes", just get it down. Last year I started with an idea and ended up with a lot of ideas, a couple of characters, 50k words, but no plot. This year, I need to get something written, in part to get on with my life. I have no qualms about it being 100% real, and yet I'm finding that fiction wins out, anyway. I find myself playing around with voices and points of view. I'll describe one scene from my, the 1st person narrator's point of view, then another scene will be taken over by the other main character. When I describe his feelings, that is fiction, isn't it? And what I choose to recall and how I present it is only one of any number of possible scenes and representations. In fact, I'm also sitting back as I write, watching to see what kind of subplots develop, and even the central theme is up for debate. I think I'm writing about one thing, but it may turn out that I'm writing about something else entirely. That is the wild and exciting truth of NaNo.
The comforting thought to quiet the inner -gagged and bound- editor is that once November is over, she may step up and have her turn.
Oh, and here's a quote from Michael Ondaatje's Divisadero: "We live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever story we tell."

Right! Thanks for that reminder. This is the soul of nanowrimo - and its motivational draw. If we start second guessing ourselves, asking for validation or begin heavy editing or rewrites during these 30 days, then we are defeating the purpose of nanowrimo.

If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.

If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.