The Truth about Verisimilitude

The holiday season evokes numerous questions about what is “truly” spiritual, loving, generous, or joyful. Partial truths abound. Is everyone merry? Do gifts express love? If your mom wants you to play nice with her bigoted, alcoholic brother, is it true that you owe her that?

This time of year elicits as many questions as platitudes. For novelists, though, whatever the season, the big questions always matter, and drama is always the best way to present them.

Whether theater or fiction, drama originates in the gap between reality and an artistic presentation of it. To probe truth, that created reality must be more credible, causal, and moral than random everyday life. 

This concept goes all the way back to Plato calling art imitative, and Aristotle countering that, basically saying, yes, imitation is instinctive, but to create what we call “art,” something beyond replication is needed

That something is inextricably intertwined with fact versus truth.

Albert Camus was on Aristotle’s side, saying:

Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.

Let’s break that down. By definition, fiction isn’t true. But facts don’t always compel and can even mislead. In any case, empirical data rarely fosters deep empathy about those from other times, cultures, even worlds. 

Fiction is a more effective vehicle for inducing empathy, and with that comes a huge responsibility. Neil Gaiman is adamant about this: 

We writers–and especially writers for children, but all writers–have an obligation to our readers: it’s the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were–to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are.

Ralph Waldo Emerson identified this same irony: 

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

Nor is this an observation meant for poets and philosophers. As Stephen King puts it, 

Fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie.

How does this lie/truth business apply? Consider a Christmas story. The starting point would not be a collection of facts about how many gifts people buy or return. Not even how many people fly or drive to convene with family. Because on its own, such data can’t probe for “truth.”

Instead, a story about one family’s holiday would be composed or at least embellished (not true) in order to reveal change in character (more true) caused by a dramatic event (also true and most compelling of all). 

The result? New truths—real ones—about this family, truths so universal that readers discover new truths about themselves. Isn’t that exactly why fiction simulates reality rather than merely reproducing it?

Tip: Fiction captures truth by replacing facts with plausible, causal, and suspenseful details.

The Gift of Fiction

Let’s set Uncle Scrooge aside for the moment. Stifle the grousing about how long writing a novel will take, how little money it will make, that it proceeds at a crawl, or that you might never find a publisher at all.

Speed and money control many things, but neither of those motivates people to read or write fiction. Don’t like the novel you’re reading? Start another. Don’t like the novel you’re writing? Start something else.

Composing good fiction is certainly hard work. But it’s also a chance to give and receive. In “Three Cognitive Benefits of Reading Fiction,” Jordan Bates lists these opportunities:

“1. Improves social perception and emotional intelligence…

  2. Increases empathy…

  3. Makes one more comfortable with ambiguity…”

Who wouldn’t want to be more open-minded, in touch with our common humanity, and capable of coping with language’s intricacy and our world’s uncertainty?

This still doesn’t explain why so many continue writing fiction when so it’s so much easier to publish what the industry calls “truth.”

~ Truth.

Plato argued that story can’t be “true” because it doesn’t record what happened. Aristotle countered that story tackles the higher truths: causality, credibility, and morality. The gift is the journey toward the real truths.

~ Discovery.

The novelist must examine many kinds of truth. Which emotions are genuine? Why do people harbor so many secrets? How is this incident/character/description both like and unlike that one? The gift is clearer vision.

~ Escape.

Instead of worrying about bills, you make metaphors. Instead of arguing with your sister-law, you abbreviate or expand time. The gift is the stimulation of creating an alternative reality.

~ Power.

You’re the master of this world. What a trip! You gleefully demolish whatever bores you and nobly insure that nice guys finish first. The gift is engineering the ending you want.

~ Catharsis.

If you’ve done your job, your characters faced obstacles that spurred them toward maturity. The gift is their journey enhancing your own in ways you don’t consciously notice.

Take a moment to look beyond how hard you work or discouraged you sometimes get. You’re expanding horizons—including you own. You’re affecting the culture while becoming part of it.

Tip: Novels change the lives not just of characters, but of those reading about or creating them.

Nature as Art, Art versus Nature

Nature hardly needs art to create breathlessness. Look closely. Define art flexibly. Isn’t every leaf or droplet “art?” The real question is whether art reproduces or imitates nature. Aristotle made this argument in response to his teacher Plato, who deemed everything but pure fact dangerous. What has this to do with you as a novelist? Everything.

Tip: Though nature is art, art itself originates in the imitation of nature.

Without that imitation, you get either:

Covering approximately 20 percent of the Earth’s surface, the Atlantic Ocean is the second largest ocean basin in the world, following only the Pacific. -- National Ocean Service

or

Look how very beautifully azure the white-capped waves go on cresting.

 Neither of those creates a sense of place like these:  

There was dull light all around, everywhere. When we walked on the crisp snow no shadow showed the footprint. We left no track. Sledge, tent, himself, myself: nothing else at all. No sun, no sky, no horizon, no world. ― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

The light was going: some cloud cover arriving, as if summoned by drama. ― China Miéville, Kraken

The color of the sky was like a length of white chalk turned on its side and rubbed into asphalt. Sanded―that was how the world looked, worked slowly down to no rough edges. ― David Guterson, The Other

After all, as Eudora Welty observed,

Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else... Fiction depends for its life on place.

To achieve that, translate nature into imagery that someone else can understand. You'll need:

~ Precision. No vague or abstract description.

~ Originality. The imagery that only you can deliver.

~ Symbolism. Make it so instantly comprehensible that it requires no explanation.

~ Drama. Setting that’s disconnected from plot has no place in fiction.

Nature makes art all the time, but fiction requires the vision that you alone can offer.

The Best Fantasy Describes Reality

Fiction itself is born in fantasy. The millennia-old quarrel between Plato and Aristotle questions the source of “truth.” Plato insisted it resides only in the realm of history and fact. But Aristotle praised a poetic version of reality, one more coherent, credible, and causal than the randomness of whatever really happened.

Fantasy has its roots deep in this dispute. Great fantasy builds a credible world, reveals truths about our own, and gives us a fun read. “Dwarf and Dragon,” the second book of D. L. Burnett’s trilogy “In the Kingdom of Dragons,” does all of this and more.  

At the Chicago Book Expo in 2004, beloved author Ursula K. Le Guin told her audience this: “Fantasy is a literature particularly useful for embodying and examining the real difference between good and evil.”

Burnett’s novel accomplishes this by layering oaths, dilemmas, and inadvertent betrayal throughout. Is your loyalty to your people or to the mentor who helped you become a leader? Do you betray your husband or your moral code? Would you kill a friend who’s gone on a rampage that endangers lives? Can dragons, or dwarfs, or giantesses overcome their basic nature and achieve something gentler, more “human”?

Questions without easy answers generate terrific plotting and gorgeous writing. As the Dwarf army approached, “Their braided beards swung like pendulums across their chests.” They are defiant about reclaiming their homeland; they are unbeatable. Only a coerced marriage can save this people.

But this is a novel about loyalty—and love. The marriage begins with a Dwarf finding his spouse “a worthy diversion.” Sadly, he discovers that “’Human love is mist. What can I or any Dwarf know of it?...I am less welcome in your chamber than a winter wind….We cannot build a union upon a grave.’” But wait. Out of an ephemeral substance called Dripstone, he expresses his love through a sculpture he must carve and carve again. Will it move her? Read the book and find out.

LeGuin’s “Why are Americans afraid of dragons?”reminds us that “The use of imaginative fiction is to deepen your understanding of your world, and your fellow men, and your own feelings, and your destiny. …For fantasy is true, of course. It isn’t factual, but it is true… it is by such beautiful non-facts that we fantastic human beings may arrive, in our peculiar fashion, at the truth.”

Author Maureen McHugh reminds all novelists to “Follow your weird.” Plato was wrong. Truth doesn’t “lie” in the fantastic. That’s where truth resides.

Tip: Regardless of genre, use your imagination to shape reality. That way you express the themes closest to your heart.