I'm very, very leery of nonfiction books where they change timeframes and use - what do they call those things? - composite characters. I don't think that's right.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I believe in books. I believe more in 'cross-media' - how characters are adapting across mediums.
I think the definition of a book is changing.
A book becomes something else once it's dramatized.
The notion that anything can be invented wholly and that these invented things are classified as 'fiction' and that other writing, presumably not made up, is called 'nonfiction' strikes me as a very arbitrary separation of things.
I used to write fiction, non-fiction, fiction, non-fiction and have a clear pattern because I'd need a break from one style when going into the next book.
A lot of the time writers are just sponges... for what's around them, and so books are helpful for focusing your mind and literally putting it into words.
An author's characters do what he wants them to do.
I think of every book as a single entity, and some have later gone on to become a series, often at the request of readers.
Novels usually evolve out of 'character.' Characters generate stories, and the shape of a novel is entirely imagined but should have an aesthetic coherence.
When you deal with nonfiction you deal with human characters.