Fiction Comes From REALITY

Fiction has many important functions in our world. But most people don’t think of public arguments when they think of fiction. The word fiction brings to light our younger days of reading books about child detectives; it doesn’t make you think about important political or social issues. In essence fiction has to work much harder when it is trying to establish a credible stance on a public argument rather than when it is just telling a story. I don’t know how many books I have read in my lifetime, but I do know there are many I have completely forgotten because they do not make a point that is anchored in reality. On the other hand all the fictional books I can think of that I have really enjoyed and not forgotten have made significant statements about our society. I wont bother going into that list because I think they are probably books we have all read and remember. The point is for someone to remember a fictional book, for more than a few days, it has to use the objective correlative. In other words the points made in a fiction must be anchored in reality in order to have lasting power.

This leads me to believe that using fiction to argue is much harder than just stating your case and giving the evidence. With fiction you have to create an entire story just to make a point. And beyond that the story can be anything as long as it gets a point across. This is probably the main reason that only a small number of people attain significance as fiction writers; most of us can’t just sit down and create a world that shows people what we think and how we think they should feel about a particular issue.
There are many things to take into consideration when crafting a public argument through fiction. For example the setting, it could be in outer space, it could be far in the past, or it could be set in a bleak and desperate future. Along with the setting of time is the issue of where in a culture you set the story. If I were to write a story about the current economic slump and have it set in the culture of the CEO’s who maybe lost some money, but are nowhere near as bad off as the vast majority of the population, readers would wonder what the point was. They would think why do I care about these men who may have lost some money, but also may have had a large hand in bringing the country to its knees. On the other hand, telling a story about a family who were on the edge of poverty before the economic downturn and their subsequent struggles to survive after the downturn would resonate with a lot more readers. A book such as “The Grapes of Wrath” does just this. In essence it is the culture of the moment that shapes what fiction writers must use to craft a valid and relevant public argument.

Upon writing this I now have much more respect for any writer who can use fiction to establish a legitimate position on an argument. I am sure there are countless more things than I have mentioned that writers must take into account when creating fiction. But most of all I believe it is actual reality that determines what a writer must consider when writing fiction. Again back to the objective correlative.