True As I Remember It by Jim Breslin
Everywhere we turn today, “the truth” is being questioned.
We hear conflicting stories about the moments leading up to Trayvon Martin’s death. If we turn on Fox News, or listen to the Republican Presidential candidates, it appears as though America has fallen apart at the seams. If we watch CBS News, our country is rebounding and gaining steam. We have the monologue told by Mike Daisey about Chinese factory workers making iPads under terrible working conditions, and the Invisible Children video that describes the horrors of Joseph Kony.
These days, particularly with social media spreading stories like a virus, it’s easy to find someone to reinforce our beliefs and, in the next click through, someone else reciting “facts” that refute our beliefs. It's enough to drive Joe Friday insane.
But what is the truth when we are trying to tell a non-fiction story? Evidently, Mike Daisey felt handcuffed by sticking to the facts, so he added in and modified stories about factory workers at a different Chinese factory, streamlined certain characters, heightened the dramatic effect of his monologue. Many movies “based on true events” are made the same way. Daisy’s monologue became so compelling it was picked up by This American Life and heard by millions of people. When certain parts of Daisy’s monologue didn’t hold up to fact-checking, This American Life apologized for their lapse.
We have a local monthly storytelling event called West Chester Story Slam, where anyone can get on stage and tell a five minute story. Each month we hear approximately ten stories, and they aren’t vetted, double checked for facts, they are stories. As the founder of the slam, I explain to folks they should think of the slam stories as creative non-fiction, stories that are “true as you remember it.” That provides a good bit of latitude.
After all, our memories are faulty. My wife and I once watched the same news report and came away with two varying understandings of what had occurred. My recollection of something that happened ten minutes ago is faulty, let alone what happened one night during college twenty-some years ago. Sometimes as I’ve prepared a story for the Story Slam, I’ve called my sibling or friend to see what they remember from “that taxi ride in Beijing” or “that time we were drinking in Dublin.” Often, they recall small details and add great insights that I didn’t remember.
What I enjoy about writing fiction is that none of the above matters. When writing fiction, we are free to seek “the truth” without being tethered by facts. It is your world, the world according to (insert your name here). Thanks to a writer’s good prose and a reader’s “suspension of disbelief,” the reader can fully escape into the story. In this day and age, when every fact can and is disputed, I often feel as though “truth” is best revealed through fiction.
We hear conflicting stories about the moments leading up to Trayvon Martin’s death. If we turn on Fox News, or listen to the Republican Presidential candidates, it appears as though America has fallen apart at the seams. If we watch CBS News, our country is rebounding and gaining steam. We have the monologue told by Mike Daisey about Chinese factory workers making iPads under terrible working conditions, and the Invisible Children video that describes the horrors of Joseph Kony.
These days, particularly with social media spreading stories like a virus, it’s easy to find someone to reinforce our beliefs and, in the next click through, someone else reciting “facts” that refute our beliefs. It's enough to drive Joe Friday insane.
But what is the truth when we are trying to tell a non-fiction story? Evidently, Mike Daisey felt handcuffed by sticking to the facts, so he added in and modified stories about factory workers at a different Chinese factory, streamlined certain characters, heightened the dramatic effect of his monologue. Many movies “based on true events” are made the same way. Daisy’s monologue became so compelling it was picked up by This American Life and heard by millions of people. When certain parts of Daisy’s monologue didn’t hold up to fact-checking, This American Life apologized for their lapse.
We have a local monthly storytelling event called West Chester Story Slam, where anyone can get on stage and tell a five minute story. Each month we hear approximately ten stories, and they aren’t vetted, double checked for facts, they are stories. As the founder of the slam, I explain to folks they should think of the slam stories as creative non-fiction, stories that are “true as you remember it.” That provides a good bit of latitude.
After all, our memories are faulty. My wife and I once watched the same news report and came away with two varying understandings of what had occurred. My recollection of something that happened ten minutes ago is faulty, let alone what happened one night during college twenty-some years ago. Sometimes as I’ve prepared a story for the Story Slam, I’ve called my sibling or friend to see what they remember from “that taxi ride in Beijing” or “that time we were drinking in Dublin.” Often, they recall small details and add great insights that I didn’t remember.
What I enjoy about writing fiction is that none of the above matters. When writing fiction, we are free to seek “the truth” without being tethered by facts. It is your world, the world according to (insert your name here). Thanks to a writer’s good prose and a reader’s “suspension of disbelief,” the reader can fully escape into the story. In this day and age, when every fact can and is disputed, I often feel as though “truth” is best revealed through fiction.
