Fact or fiction?

Fact or fiction? That is the question.  It comes across every aspect of our society. The question in the media from CNN to Fox to MSNBC is always, is it news or infotainment? Well, there's no question about Fox, but there may be with the others. News outlets are always claiming to be reporting fact, but the reality is they each spin it in their own way.  It is true good journalism attempts to make the stories as unbiased as possible when reporting. Yet, there is always an angle.  It is the unfortunate curse of being human - having perspective and world view.

Someone has to make choices about what qualifies as news or something else. Who chooses the stories for 6 o'clock news? Are there other stories that are missing? What is relegated to the editorial page in the daily paper? What is fact?  What is real? What is a flight of fancy or the result of indigestion caused by bad Chinese food?

The question becomes when is an experience fact, or something else? Or better yet, can experience even be fact?  Experience is something that is nuanced and dependent on perspective.  It is individualized and contextual.  It cannot be described in the black and white word "fact." People will say they have seen ghosts or felt a presence near them at various times in their lives.  Is it fact? Well, it is what that person experienced.  So it is not fact.  It is real.  It is true experience, and therefore that person's truth.  If it is that person's truth, it is true. 

What am I getting at? I am hinting at that lovely gray area where a piece of writing crosses over from fact to fiction.  All writers write from experience.  The best writing takes from the world pieces of culture and history and spins a web of plot and character development around them.  It is the best lie, with a kernel of truth. So, is my writing based on my personal experience? Yes.  Is it true? Totally! Is it real? Absolutely. Is it fact? Not in the slightest.

That, good sirs, is the reality of writing good fiction. So will some of the characters seem familiar? You may know these people - they might live down the street.  They are real people with hopes and dreams and aspirations, desperate circumstances and delusions. They live in my city of Phoenix, my state of Arizona.  That's the truth.