THE USE OF FACTS in fiction

All fiction is founded upon fact, for the boldest imagination must have
some definite point from which to take its flight; but the un garnished
truth is seldom literature in itself, though it may offer excellent
material for literary embellishment. 
The one place where the average writer should not seek
his material is the world of literature. Almost from the time when
men first began to dabble in letters they have drawn on their
predecessors for their subject matter; but this practice has produced
a deal of unconscious plagiarism, which is responsible for most of
the conventional and stereotyped stories with which we are afflicted
to-day. Of anyone hundred average stories submitted for sale, 
probably seventy-five are damned by their hopelessly hackneyed
conception and treatment; and they suffer because the writer, reading
some attractive story built upon a similar plot, has attempted to go
and do likewise, and has unconsciously used all the conventional
parts while omitting the essential individuality. 
It is safe for the novice to go only to the world for literary material. 
The matter so obtained will be intrinsically the same as that gained
from the writings of others, but the fact that you get your information
through your own senses will considerably obviate the danger of adopting
the conventional view in the matter. I do not mean to say that you
should deliberately set out to search for new types and incidents as
Dickens did, though I would certainly commend such a course; I mean
rather that you should be content to write of what you personally and
intimately know, and not attempt to treat of matters of which you have
only a vague superficial knowledge, or of which you are totally
ignorant. Excellent stories have been written by men who were personally
unacquainted with the matters with which they dealt, but they were in
every case masters of their art, who knew how to gain and use
second-hand information and how to supplement insufficient data with
literary skill. 
It is rare indeed that a fact can be used without embellishment. Mere
facts are frequently most unliterary, though they may be susceptible
of a high literary polish. The sub-title "A True Story, " which young
writers think so valuable a part of the tale, is too often the
trademark of an unreadable mess of conventional people, ordinary
incidents and commonplace conversation. We find few genuinely true
stories, and when we do find them we seldom care to read them
through. I have read many stories which I knew to be literally true, 
because they contained so much of the hackneyed and the irrelevant. 
Life itself is a very conventional affair; it abounds with dull
events and stupid people; and for that reason alone fiction would
demand something out of the common. Commonplace persons and
commonplace things do appear in literature, but they must have
something more than their commonplaces to recommend them. 
"The novice in story telling . . . has heard that truth is stranger than
fiction, and supposes that the more truth he can get into his tale the
stronger and more effective it will be. . . . Truth, i. e. , reality, is
very seldom strange; it is usually tame and flat and commonplace; and
when it is strange it is apt to be grotesque and repulsive. Most of the
experiences of daily life afford material only for a chronicle of
dulness; and most of the 'strange' or unusual happenings had better be
left to the newspaper and the records of the police courts. This
statement may be strengthened. Does not the able reporter select and
decorate his facts, suppressing some, emphasizing others, arranging his
'story' with reference to picturesqueness and effect?
"In other words, verisimilitude, not verity, is wanted in fiction. The
observer notes his facts, and then the artist seizes on the ideas behind
them, the types they represent, the spiritual substances they embody. 
The result, when all goes well, is as lifelike as life itself, though it
is not a copy of anything (in detail) that really lives. . . . The budding
writer of fictitious tales must be familiar with facts, at least in his
own range: he must know life and nature, or his work is naught. But when
he has this knowledge, he must put the facts in the background of his
mind. . . . Real incidents, dragged against their will into an (alleged)
imaginary narrative, are apt by no means to improve it, but to sound as
'flat and untunable' as our own praises from our own mouths. "
"There must be no misconception about great fiction being a transcript
of life. Mere transcription is not the work of an artist, else we should
have no need of painters, for photographers would do; no poems, for
academical essays would do; no great works of fiction, for we have our
usual sources of information--if information is all we want. All
these things certainly contain the facts of life which one must know for
the constructive work of the imagination, for they are the rough
material, the background of knowledge from which the illusion of real
life must proceed. But they are not life, though they are the
transcription of life. The human significance of facts is all that
concerns one. The inwardness of facts makes fiction; the history of
life, its emotions, its passions, its sins, reflections, values. These
you cannot photograph nor transcribe. Selection and rejection are two
profound essentials of every art, even of the art of fiction, though it
be so jauntily practiced by the amateur
In using facts, then, the first thing to learn is what to suppress and
what to elaborate, and that involves that most necessary possession of
the story teller, a sense of proportion. Because a conversation about
the weather occupies two dull people for ten minutes is no reason that
it should receive an equal number of pages; and because an important
event is almost instantaneous is no excuse for passing it with a single
line. Again, the fact that you are relating what actually occurred does
not relieve you of the necessity of making it plausible. Painters
acknowledge that there are color combinations in nature which they dare
not reproduce, lest they be dubbed unnatural; and similarly things exist
which the writer may present only after he has most carefully prepared
the way for their credence. The truth is that we have declared that even
nature shall conform to certain conventions, and we reject as impossible
any deviations from our preconceived ideas.
category:Writing techniques