On Writing: How Is Real Life Different To Fiction?

Truth vs Realistic Fabrication

A Lifelike Collection of Books

Ten Shun!

I was inspired to write this post after reading this New Yorker article:

The title of the piece is ‘How To Tell If You Are In A TV Show’ and focuses on the life-like devices used in TV drama and how they are at variance with everyday life.

Similar principles are true when writing fiction. It is a severe mistake to think that novels should be ‘just like life’, because life is largely shapeless and often random, whereas a novel has to be carefully designed to represent life - not to precisely mimic it.

Here’s a short extract from my new book about writing, released in June, ‘Yes! No! But Wait…’

Is the plot in a story the same as what happens in life?’

The answer to the second question is the simpler.

It’s ‘no’.

Plot isn’t the same as life.

It couldn’t be more different from life, in fact.

True – in life, stuff happens, just as stuff happens in a novel.

However, I don’t know about your life, but most of my life is routine – not to say meaningless and, as often as not, boring.

I scrub my teeth. I meet a friend. I watch TV. I cut my nails. I go shopping. I go to sleep. I wake up. I eat. I breathe. I read my credit card bill. I panic. I pick my nose. I water the plants. I stub my toe. I argue with my partner.

And so on.

In other words, like history, it’s just one damn thing after another.

There’s no particular order to it, other than that imposed by necessity, or chance, or the pursuit of desires or the avoidance of pain.

A plot is different.

George Saunders, in his book on writing A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (2021), writes:

The story is faster than real life, more compressed and exaggerated. A place where something new always has to be happening, something relevant to that which has already happened. [‘A Page at a Time: Thoughts on “In the Cart”’]