The first lie of fiction is that the author gives some order to the chaos of life: chronological order, or whatever order the author chooses.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
As a writer of fiction, lying is the central thing to all books.
The kind of fiction I'm trying to write is about telling the truth.
However much, as readers, we lose ourselves in a novel or story, fiction itself is an experience on the order of memory -not on the order of actual occurrence.
Fiction connects: past and present; the great and the small; the surface with the depths. Fiction brings out the innermost, invisible springs of life that cannot be revealed in factual narratives.
Surely the job of fiction is to actually tell the truth. It's a paradox that's at the heart of any kind of storytelling.
A lot of first novels are coming-of-age stories. A lot are autobiographical.
Contrary to all those times you've heard a writer confess at a reading that he writes fiction because he is a pathological liar, fiction writing is all about telling the truth.
Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.
Fiction is the truth inside the lie.
Fiction is a lie that is told in the service of truth.