I find it pretty odd that people would even consider a book that is only 95% true non-fiction. Fiction is made up, so non-fiction isn’t made up. If a book is 95% true, that means it’s 5% made up, so it’s fiction. For a book to be non-fiction, it has to be 100% true and real. I can see small things like maybe minor changes in dialogue, or stuff like that. It's not always easy to remember every detail of every event. I think it’s a crime that authors can write a story about their life, and not all of it is true. It’s lying, and it’s wrong. Half-truths aren’t AS bad I guess, but people should still tell the truth when they write. I think writers only do that to make what they are writing about actually sound interesting and cool, because maybe it really isn’t that exciting. It certainly worked for Frey, but he kind of got a good dose of karma in the end. I personally don’t agree with David Shields. I feel like there needs to be a line between fiction and non-fiction. If there was no division, how would you know if you were reading something that was true? That would just bother me, a lot. I guess that you really can’t always know if the non-fiction memoir that you are reading is true, but you would assume that it is, because it’s non-fiction. But in the case of Frey’s memoir, it wasn’t. Therefore, if your book is not true, don’t call it non-fiction. That distinction is there for a reason, so I don’t think we should get rid of it, but authors should also have to follow it a little more closely. Those genres are really important; we don’t want to be reading a non-fiction story that is actually full of made up stuff! Combining fiction and non-fiction would always keep readers wondering and questioning if what they are reading is real, which isn’t good. We definitely need the separate genres of fiction and non-fiction, but authors should follow those a little more carefully. If your non-fiction book isn’t 100% real, don’t call it non-fiction, because those separate genres are there for a reason.
I don't neccisarily agrre with all of it. Sometimes I think to keep the readers attention you might have to lie about a few things. As long as the book is 95% true, I think it's ok.
ReplyDeleteIf a writer wrote a book based on their life than they can change a few things and not need to remeber everything. Just as long as they don't say it's non-fiction because it isn't 100% true
ReplyDeleteCombining them would make it interesting but what if some readers do not like that? Then what would they do?
ReplyDeleteI dont think that non-fiction should be 100% true but rather 95% so that the reader is still interested but you are correct that by definition non-fiction should be 100% true
ReplyDeleteYou make a very good point. If any part of a "non-fiction" story is made up then it should be considered fiction. But I still think that labels aren't that important and not needed.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we need to label books because it helps readers to know what they are reading. I think that it would be okay for a nonfiction book to be 99 percent true because every author needs a little creative liberty to make it interesting but I agree that only small details should be changed.
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