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.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Fiction is a lie that is told in the service of truth.
Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.
Fiction is the truth inside the lie.
Truth is more peculiar than fiction. Life is really a startling place.
The kind of fiction I'm trying to write is about telling the truth.
Truth may be stranger than fiction on a plot and narrative basis, but fiction can investigate tone in a way that things based on a true story can't.
Telling ourselves that fiction is in a sense true and at the same time not true is essential to the art of fiction. It's been at the heart of fiction from the start. Fiction offers both truth, and we know it's a flat-out lie. Sometimes it drives a novelist mad. Sometimes it energizes us.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense.
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.