Which is More Difficult: Truth or Fiction?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Weird question for you. I was talking to someone at an event recently, and they asked if my new book was based on a true story.

When I said "no, I made the whole thing up," there was a look of...disappointment.

"Oh," this person said, "I always love when books are based on true stories."

Well, yeah, sometimes I do too, and real life is always an inspiration for everything I write, of course, my books can only be my books because they come from my experience and my curiosity, and my adventures and my hopes and dreams and my way of looking at the world. And coincidence, you know, what I happen to see and when I happen to see it.

And of course people think my books are based on my television stories. And when I say “well, of course my experience in being an investigative true crime reporter certainly is reflected in my novels, but my novels are not my television stories disguised into fiction” –Again, disappointment. Or maybe surprise.

Why is this, Reds and Readers? Do you think a novel is more interesting if it’s based on specifically and solely real life? 

I always think, I have to say, doesn't it take more brain power to actually make something up? Yes yes yes, our imagination is inspired by real life, there’s no question about that. But are you disappointed when something is not based on precisely something that happened in real life? What do you think about this?

I mean, Lee Child was once asked how he knew that the ignition switch of a certain kind of tank was red. “Wow.”  the person said, “you must’ve done a lot of research.” And Lee said “well no, I just made that up.”

 And the person was–you guessed it– very disappointed. 

Really?  Doesn’t it take an equal amount of talent to create a story so realistic that it feels real? I mean that’s what we’re going for, right?

Or–what?

HALLIE EPHRON: The trick is knowing what you can make up and doing enough research to make it believable. I think people ask the question because they are fascinated by the answer to: Where did you get your idea. For me, at least, there’s *always* an answer that involves some experience I had or a friend had or something I read about that piqued my interest (or horror) or made me laugh.

Sometimes I have to do a ton of research to be sure that I get the details right. Some books require it more than others. Writing a mystery set in Hollywood in the 60s, I drew a lot on experience, growing up with screenwriters as parents. A murder in a present-day MRI lab required much more research. 

And woe be to the mystery writer who gets her ballistics/gun details wrong. 

But to beg the question, I think all of our books grow out of some kind of personal experience, if only emotionally. Which is pretty glorious.

HANK: Oh, sure, research is different from experience. SO agree. But I keep finding that people want a one-on-one on-the-nose THING that happened to you or someone, and then that we took that incident and fictionalized it. 

RHYS BOWEN: I’m always bemused that a person wants to read fiction but wants it all to be true. That’s why you read true crime.  Having said that I am meticulous in research for my historical novels. If they are set in a real time and place then everything has to be correct  apart from fictional characters I have planted there. I can’t tell you how much time I spend staring at Google Earth, old maps, old newspapers etc. But the reward is when someone says I grew up in Greenwich Village, so did my mother and grandmother and you have taken me back to my childhood. Then I know I have done it right. 

Sometimes I have to create a fictitious place because bad things happen in my story that didn’t happen in the real place.  So Cassis becomes St Benet in Mrs Endicott. 

But the actual plots? Sometimes there is a seed of inspiration based on something I heard, read or observed but the story has to come out of my head! We are creators not reproducers!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: This is a really curious thing, readers’ desire for a  novel to be “true.” In which case it wouldn’t be fiction, would it? My agent has been known to say, “Just because something really happened doesn’t make it good fiction,” and I’ve tried to adopt that as my motto. That doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes use things that really happened as a jumping off point, the beginning of many rounds of “what ifs.” I’m sure we all do that–something has to jumpstart that creative spark, and maybe that’s where the fascination comes from, people wanting to know where ideas come from. I do try to be meticulous in my research and details, however, as that’s what makes stories feel real.

LUCY BURDETTE: I too find it curious that a reader would be disappointed if a book isn’t based on something real. I agree, Hank, that making something up completely is the hardest! That said, most of my book ideas come from a little snippet of life. In my upcoming A DELICIOUS DECEPTION, the idea was sparked for me by a newspaper article talking about a place for safe custody exchange now required for all Sheriff’s departments. That got my writer brain whirling…

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I suspect the “is it true” folks have fallen down the True Crime book/ podcast/documentary hole and now expect every mystery to be based in fact. My motto is “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” With a story, you can shape events and characters to embody truths you sometimes can’t get to when you stick to facts. The greatest thing about fiction is that, when done well, the reader is emotionally transported into someone else’s experience. Walking the proverbial mile in another’s shoes. You certainly can’t get that with true crime, because half the pleasure of reading those stories is assuring yourself you NEVER would have done a, b, or c and thus gotten scammed or murdered.

JENN McKINLAY: This reminds me of the years I dated an artist and he would tell me how people only thought he was talented when he did drawings or paintings that looked “real” or “like a photograph” and he would sigh. Because, of course, art like writing takes what we see or feel or think and turns it into so much more, giving us new and different ways to process and navigate this journey called life. 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Yes Jenn, exactly.

And I do think this is all so interesting because  research is a different thing, and of course we want to get it right.

And being inspired by our own  lives or a random thing we read or see–sure,that’s devoutly to be wished. And that’s why our books are so different from anyone else’s.

But it’s a totally different thing to take an event that has already happened and change the names and potentially the outcome. It's a different thing to say: oh, is this based on the –what, the murder of x person on their honeymoon in the Alps? Or Natalee Holloway or the Louvre robbery or –you pick a true crime. Those would be terrific books. And I am sure they already are.

(And sure, Casey Anthony and my book Trust Me? Are definitely sisters in crime.)  

But what about something that never really happened? Something we have to think of out of nothing but our own imaginations?

Because some things are just imagined.  MOTHER DAUGHTER SISTER STRANGER?  Yup. Fiction. (Far as I know there are not two sisters who survived the suspicious small plane crash that killed their parents. Let me know if you’ve heard of that.)

What do you think, Reds and Readers? Do you need your fiction to be connected to a true story?