The fiction is all fiction

Sometimes in a story I hesitate to use something from real life because I believe some reader, a stranger to me, might take issue with its portrayal. Today’s story gave me that worry on a few points. One such was Halite, a real town thinly disguised (I changed the name), not far from Death Valley. And as I gave it derelict houses, limited options, and drug troubles, I felt uncomfortable with the idea that someone who lives in the real town might recognize it and dislike seeing it relayed, for the sake of entertainment, as a sad place going to seed.

The place has seen better days, though. Let’s be honest.

(Photo credit to Redfin)

After all, I could just as easily have written a story in which the people of the town, brought so close by the lean nature of their home, truly look out for each other, and where its rugged isolation has instilled in them admirable grit. So when a problem arises, even if it’s too big to solve, they help each other endure it, and they never act like victims.

If you live in the real town, you might like that image better. And maybe it’s even closer to the truth.

Doesn’t matter, though, does it? We’re dealing in fiction here, and fiction is a lie. My chief responsibility is to you, the reader, not to anyone else, and my job is to make the lie interesting. You begin to read the story knowing that it’s a lie, and your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to find a way to believe it regardless. So we’re in on the lies together. What’s reality to a couple of liars like us?

The weird truth is, there’s a very real way in which everything written down (or spoken; anything in language) is untrue. If I’m feeling sad and I write “I’m sad,” I have not genuinely conveyed my internal state, have I? The words are poor signifiers and they lend you only the most approximate idea of my condition. (Weirder still, words actually manufacture reality. Am I able to think thoughts that I don’t know the words for? Not really. So when I learn the words and I acquire those feelings — how true are they? We wouldn’t call them lies, but whatever they are, whatever human consciousness is, it’s not so straightforward.)

Well, maybe “I’m sad” gives you enough to go on. You might bake me a cake to cheer me up. Thanks.

But think about the implications of not knowing exactly what anyone else feels (or even what you yourself might feel, outside your limited vocabulary). If I’m writing historical fiction and I write “Abraham Lincoln stared out the window, vexed by Antietam” — what’s true in that sentence? I wasn’t there. I didn’t see him stare. And if I did, I don’t know what his thoughts were. Maybe that moment his vexation centered on Mary Todd. Even if he left a letter saying “I stared out the window, vexed by Antietam” — that isn’t the full story, is it? What diverse thoughts might ramble through your head in any single minute, dividing and interrupting each other and recombining in ways fleeting and unmemorialized? To say “Antietam vexed me” is to simplify. And a simplification of what happened is not exactly what happened. That’s why (I believe) we are not inaccurate when we append even to “true stories” the disclaimer “Any resemblance to real persons and places is purely coincidental.”

Here’s the cemetery at the edge of town, with “the facility” in the background. This is the part where I note that any resemblance to real persons or places is purely coincidental. (Photo by Ewan Telford.)

So I can’t apologize to anyone who lives in the real town that I turned into Halite, but I can explain, well, it’s fiction now. And even if I tried to tell the truth about your town, I would fail, because I would have to simplify it. I do hope no one who reads this month’s story then embarrasses you by visiting your actual town expecting to be chased by monsters. But if they do. . . I don’t think that’s realistically my fault.

I imagine, though, that if they do, the isolation of your home and the closeness of its people have combined to give you real grit and true friends, which will help you endure such a vexation.