In my mind a book has to be over mostly true to be considered non-fiction only a little sliver of it should be not true. Non-fiction means it’s supposed to be factual and if most of the book is not true then why call it non-fiction. I understand some writers might have to embellish the truth a little bit to make it more interesting and add more the story but they shouldn’t embellish it to the point where it’s far out there. I’m sure tons of authors have exaggerated the truth a little bit in their books. Half-truth for me wouldn’t be enough to call it non-fiction. Maybe they should create a new genre like half truth-fiction. It does matter that they bent the truth because Frey bent the truth a lot and he’s advertising that this stuff really happened to him and it really didn’t. I do not believe him when he says that only 5% was not true a little more than 5% is not true. For Mortenson people invested their money to give to the charity and he spent it on other things besides what he was supposed to. It matters a lot in their cases that they bent the truth. No David Shields is not right we do need to label things fiction and non-fiction because that’s what people look for , the genre that they like and if books don’t have genres then there would be just a bunch of books everywhere and no one would want to read because there are so many choices it would be overwhelming.
If you had to label a book that had non-fiction qualities but was labeled fiction what would you do?
ReplyDelete"Half-truth for me wouldn’t be enough to call it non-fiction." and " It matters a lot in their cases that they bent the truth." are opposing statements, while I see you conviction in your theory I can't help but wonder if this was thoughly thought through.
ReplyDeleteI think embelishing the story turns it into fiction. The only thing that odesn't have to be completely true is the dialogue, because you probably won't be able to remember exactly what people said.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you
ReplyDeleteIf you start changes things that happened, and it makes a significant difference, then it's fiction.
ReplyDeleteDialouge can be amde up because you can't remember, but you can't have a conversation with someone if you didn't in real life.
ReplyDeleteI think that a book has to be true, but changing things starts to make it more like fiction, but I guess it really depends what you are changing.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you most of the book should be true for it to be called non-fiction
ReplyDeletedisagree, it has to be all true
ReplyDelete