All You Need To Know About Fiction and Truth

The words fiction and truth seem like the two opposite ends of a pole which can never go hand in hand. Fiction is purely a work of imagination of the creator or the writer whereas truth is based on the happenings of actual events as well as true and verifiable facts.

Yet very few of us know that both are required to give an identity to each other. Truth is incomplete without a world of fiction whereas fiction is incomplete without the world of truth. As a matter of fact, how did we actually define fiction? – something that is opposed to the truth.

That is why both are required for the existence of each other. And thus it becomes important for literature learners to understand the difference between them for effective project help. 

Fiction, in a prose work or a narrative, which is based on anything but the actual account of events that happened in reality. This entire piece of work is invented or rather created by the author. Thus, it remains far away from reality yet very close to it.

Just imagine while you read a book about some supernatural thing or maybe watch a television series or movies based on it. How easily are you able to believe the entire plot set up by the makers? This has its reason in the statement made by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria.

In this work Coleridge said that to believe in a work of fiction and to understand the writer’s or poet’s work in the fullest sense one needs to have a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’, that is, one needs to put aside their thinking that something shown in the piece of art actually doesn’t exist in the real world.

Several critics and philosophers have come up with research paper writings that state that the world of fiction conveys fictional statements that are analogous to the real world. Others, most notably I. A. Richards has held that fiction is a form of emotive language composed of pseudo statements. Whereas a general statement is justified by its truth, a pseudo statement is justified by the effect it has on the shaping of our attitudes. 

On the contrary, they need to believe that whatever is shown to them in the form of art or piece of literature is true in the fullest of sense. Only then will a reader be able to appreciate a piece of work by a writer or poet, to the fullest. So now when you see any supernatural movie, you need to believe that whatever is happening is true.

In fact, we readers or spectators actually do this. While reading a piece of work or while watching such a movie, we unconsciously get so engrossed in it that we believe that whatever is happening is actually happening. Our mood and behavior alter according to the setting of our favorite book or show, for example, if it does not end the way we want it to, then we become sad. That is how closely the world of fiction is related to the world of truth. 

In the field of literature, the fictitious world is used in poems and dramas as well, but in the general sense, the word fiction is used to refer to a novel or a short story. When you look into the world of fiction, nothing shown there would seem to you different from the real world.

In fact, this world has the same settings, plots similar to that of our everyday life and characters which are very similar to us. Stories are told based upon what a person sees around himself and what you see around yourself is sheer reality. What makes the world of truth the world of fiction, is the imagination of the author or the writer. But it is to be remembered that the stories are a part of our life, and we convey truth while we are conveying stories. Strange and ironic as it may seem, but this is what actually happens.

We use a false world, false characters, some made up places and some made up plots to communicate the essence of our everyday lives. For example, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice represents a fictional world of fictional characters and fictional settings yet whatever it conveys is the reflection of reality itself. Her work reflects the social condition of her time, the domination of women and the reality of that era that women and men had the sole purpose of marrying each other and having a settled life.

What gives a fictional touch to this work is the out-of-the-box thinking of the protagonist Elizabeth Bennet, who is an ambitious girl wanting something more in her life than just marriage and a settled life with her husband. Her thinking is against what people generally thought in those times and through her Austen wishes to address the audience and convey to the later generations, the plight of women in her times. 

The modern writers of prose fiction differentiate between the fictional scenes, persons, dialogues and events that the narrator describes or reports and the narrator’s own assertions about human life, about the world and other such things. The central generalizations of the latter part are what is known as the theme or thesis of a work. Sometimes many such claims are said to be inferred from the narrator’s choice and control of the fictional characters as well as the plot of the narrative. 

One thing that always affects these writings of fiction, as found out by various research paper writings, is the belief of the reader. At this point the writer’s beliefs clash with that of the reader and impact the work of fiction. The reader may have his own social, political and moral beliefs which may not let him read the work in an unbiased manner. And that is where the work is impacted. 

Thus these were a few basic points on fiction, which may provide research project help to literature learners as well as facilitate their creative writing as well.

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