But you remember it fondly because it spoke to you at a certain place in your history, when you had a certain psychological makeup. It doesn’t strike you as deeply, or resonate as true. It’s also possible that you may reread your favorite book and it’s not quite as you remembered it. The cenobites in Clive Barker’s Hellbound Heart speak to the dangers of unrepressed desire, and how desire itself, if left unchecked, can consume you in the thrall of pain. Anne Rice’s vampires, while being powerful and immortal, speak to the pain of being human and watching those that you love die. Something doesn’t have to take place in this reality, with the laws of this universe, in order for it to speak a truth to you. As if the writer understood you perhaps even better than you understood yourself.Įven the most fantastical, escapist fiction tells us something about our psyches.Įven the most fantastical, escapist fiction tells us something about our psyches. Maybe even like it was written specifically for you. It’s your favorite book because even if the writer is dead, it feels personal. It probably has good characters, or a great style, but more importantly than that, it speaks a truth to you. You can leave the impression of your story buried in their psyche, to be revealed in dreams, because truth is one of the most powerful tools you have. If you have ever been moved to tears by a beautiful dance, or felt the shivering awe of a symphony, then you’ve felt a truth that can’t be explained in words.Īnd if you learn how to write authentic fiction, you too can move people to tears or laughter. It wasn’t an authentic piece of writing because those weren’t your stories. The first time you ever tried to sit down and write a story it was probably clumsy and bad, a pale imitation of the books and movies that influenced you. It’s something that has to be developed inside of you. But as a fiction writer, what you really need to understand is that what is true is what tells us something real about ourselves.Īuthenticity isn’t just something that you stumble upon, or know how to do automatically. Books written on the subject of truth, reality, and authenticity could probably fill a library bigger than the moon. But what does that even mean, really? What is ‘real’ fiction? What, for that matter, is ‘real’ in the first place? If an authentic writer is one that speaks the truth, then how do we define truth? If you want to write something good, it needs to be real. Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
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