Mary Rosenblum:  Welcome to our Wednesday Forum I wanted to talk  about the differences between telling a real story -- personal narrative and memoir -- and telling a fiction story. There ARE differences, they're not identical.  Some elements of story telling -- whether it's a real story or a fiction story -- are the same.  You need to engage your readers and keep their attention all the way through. That's where craft comes in and it's pretty much the same, whether you're writing personal narrative or a murder mystery.  The main difference between fiction and nonfiction is in reader expectations.

Readers of fiction have certain expectations from the story. If you don't meet those expectations, they are disappointed in the story. Readers of nonfiction have different expectations. In a fiction story, the readers want a clear conflict, a satisfying resolution.   They want characters who are real and a sense of being sucked into a real world. In nonfiction, however, readers know that they're reading truth. This really happened, it isn't made up.  We value truth in a very gut sense. That's what you strive for in fiction, after all. M   We make the story seem so real that readers find themselves believing it.  But in nonfiction, it's a given. : So we're content to enjoy less of a clear conflict and resolution in nonfiction. It's the truth that really hooks us, rather than a made up conflict and resolution that compels us.

How does this work in SF, Mary, getting sucked into the real world of fairies, aliens etc?
Mary Rosenblum:  It works the same as with any other genre, jrp. Your readers willingly suspend their disbelief.  Okay, you know that fairies probably don't exit, we're not living in habitats on the moon, but you shut that out of your mind as you read and if the writing is good, for a time, this is real for you.  But in nonfiction, readers don't have to suspend disbelief.  You are telling a real story.

 Now that does not mean it's okay to make a nonfiction story boring! That's where I see a lot of weakness among my personal narrative students.  Just because it really happened does not mean it's compelling if you write it like a grocery list!  You still want to create the same rise and fall of dramatic energy, even if you're writing about Thanksgiving dinner with the dreaded Momsey cousins.  If you were writing a fiction story, you'd need a clear external conflict and character conflict to resolve and that conflict and resolution is what drives the story -- that's the core.
In the personal narrative version, the readers want to be entertained by the story, but the fact that it really happened and we can relate to those events carry the weight of the story. We don't need that clear conflict and resolution in order to feel satisfied. This is the main reason why novice writers who try to write a real story as a 'fiction' story generally don't succeed.
I see that a lot.
A student wants to write about past experiences, but wants to change things a bit, so he/she decides to do it as fiction.  But because that author wants to keep events real, generally, the resulting story falls between fiction and nonfiction and splats on the floor, so to speak.  It might be compelling as a nonfiction real story. It’s  not real, since the student has added to it but  it lacks a sufficient conflict and resolution to satisfy the fiction readers. Since  it's going to be called fiction, the readers will be fiction readers not nonfiction readers.  So the novice writer has written a fiction story for nonfiction readers.
And that generally does not work.
My advice is, if you want to tell a real life story, make it a real life story.  If you want to write a fiction story, make it a fiction story.  If you want to use real life events to create a fiction story, start with a strong conflict and resolution and use your real life events to create realistic people and a realistic world, but do not try to stick to a complete and unbroken chain of mostly real events. Remember...if you call it fiction, your nonfiction readers are not going to read it, so don't write for them.  Let's look at an example..  Let’s say our novice writer has a brother who got in trouble a lot as a kid. He ran away, wasn't respectful to his parents, ended up in jail for shoplifting, and seemed to have learned his lesson, but eventually got back into trouble later.
Written as a personal narrative, there's plenty here to engage readers.
We get the writer's take on what it was like to grow up in the shadow of Bad Brother, and we have the insights into how his parents really tried and maybe were not to blame for his behavior. So there are some universals here for readers to engage with (gee, maybe it wasn't all my fault that my daughter got busted for shoplifting -- gee, I'm not the only one who felt cheated when my big brother's problems always got the attention).  And you have the engaging craft -- vivid characters (who are real), vivid description, nice pacing and rising and falling dramatic tension. Very nice personal narrative piece, very saleable.
Okay, so our writer decides that the family will not like to see their dirty laundry aired, and she will turn this into a fiction story. Now she tells the same story, changes the names, maybe embroiders some of her Bad Brother's exploits, so that he's now part of a nasty local gang, figuring she'll make it more dramatic.   But essentially it's the same story.  And as fiction, it falls flat.
Why?
It's simply a narrative of Bad Brother's exploits. He gets in trouble a lot, but there's no central conflict that gets resolved.  He goes to jail, seems to have learned his lesson, but did not. The story sort of peters out with the sense that he's just going to keep on getting in more trouble.  The fiction readers came to this story with an expectation.  We're going to meet this troubled kid, we see what he needs to fix, and he's going to fix it. We have a central conflict and satisfying resolution. Bad Brother struggles, finds some way to save himself, and will save himself.  Or maybe the story is the counselor who struggled to save Bad Brother.  We see why this counselor needs to do this. He either succeeds or he fails and learns something about himself from this failure that will change him in a satisfying way.  Or the sister is the main character in the story. She is clearly badly affected by the Bad Brother, but at the climax finds a way to save herself.
Again, satisfying conflict and resolution in three different forms. BUT... that's not what the novice writer wrote. The novice writer fictionalized events but did not change the main arc of the story. There is no satisfying conflict and resolution here, so those fiction readers who expect it, are not satisfied.  Same events, same vivid description, but the story arc...as a FICTIONAL story arc....is weak. The hard part for most novice writers is to make the big changes that are required in order to make that real life event work as fiction. Bad Brother never did have a good counselor who cared.  Sister didn't make any big changes in her life.  Bad Brother just went on getting into trouble and then 'reforming' and is now doing 30 to life in the state pen.

 Because we DO value the truth, it's very hard for us to yank it out of real life events sufficiently to make it work as a fiction story. We know it's truth so we want to leave it there, recognizing its power.  However, if we write it as ‘fiction’ then the readers think it's all fiction. So they expect fiction conventions.

That does not mean that some real life events can't make good fiction stories.  The boy scout troop that gets lost and is found by a heroic effort on the part of a search dog and handler will make a great fiction story.  You can use the real events and simply make the characters more interesting. But it would be even stronger as a nonfiction narrative, so why change it?  Lots of fiction today is based on real life situations, but the authors have been able to distance themselves enough from those real life situations that they can make the story work as a fiction story, changing events and characters as needed.  That is the hard part.  Most of the time, the novice writer simply can't get that much distance from the events and it becomes too difficult to sacrifice that truth that matters so much to us. 'It really happened that way' is NO excuse for fiction. NONE!
'It really happened that way' is only valid in nonfiction.
Remember... readers value the truth a lot more than a really good made up story.  That's why nonfiction outsells fiction by such a large margin.
Truth can be stranger then fiction but not necessarily as exciting?
Mary Rosenblum:  And not as believable, jrp.  Real people do seemingly unlikely things all the time. But in fiction, you have to make their motivations plausible.  Not so in nonfiction.
"The difference between fiction and non-fiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable." -Mark Twain.
Mary Rosenblum:  Once again, 'Mark Twain' come through with the perfect words. LOL  That's it, exactly.  I have seen many news items where I shake my head, muttering 'I could never get away with that in a story'!  And I couldn't! But it really happened.
Hmmm we’re voyeurs?
Mary Rosenblum:  Well, duh, jrp....been stuck in a traffic jam as people slow down to eyeball the accident across the center divider on the freeway lately? We are incredible voyeurs. That's what fiction AND personal narrative are all about.  And that's why realism is so important in fiction. The more it seems like real life, the more your readers engage. The real key to effective use of real life in fiction is to distance yourself so much from those events that you don't bat an eye at completely changing things.
The, ah, big conflict and resolution...
Mary Rosenblum:  In fiction, yes. Not needed in nonfiction...'the truth' is enough.  For those of you who read both fiction and personal narrative, think about how you read and what satisfies you.
That truth can be cause for liable...if it is someone else's.
Mary Rosenblum:  Well, that's always an issue if you're writing about real events. Depends on what you write. Remember...libel means that your words have damaged the other person in some concrete way.  He can't get a job now that you have written about how he's a child molester, for example. I personally suggest that you ALWAYS change names, jrp. It can be very unnerving to realize that thousands of strangers now know about your behavior at that infamous Thanksgiving dinner.

 But of course, people who know the story will know that it's you. :-)
Mary Rosenblum:  Of course.  But as I said, just writing about real life events is not libel. Saying something that harms that person in a significant way - they can't get jobs, they lose business -- is what a libel award is based on. And the truth can have consequences outside of the rule of law.  An American who was a crime reporter in Japan for many years has written a memoir that details a lot of the Yakuza doings, and he's now got a price on his head.  Your brother in law can punch you out after that narrative about the family Thanksgiving dinner.
No libel suit needed here!
But very few memoir, relatively speaking,  are written about crimes or behavior that could result in a libel suit or a hit-man.    Mostly it's about family and friends, and then it's just a matter of 'will these people ever talk to me again'?

 That is a built in NF risk. My story (one of them) is real, the perp has passed away but there are family members who would recognize events.
Mary Rosenblum:  Any time you write about real life issues, people who also know about them are going to recognize them.
I'm curious how to fictionalize extraordinary or fantastical EVENTS, not so much the people involved? How do you make those events into plausible plot issues?
Mary Rosenblum:  Gail, that can be a challenge.  Two issues are in play here. One -- out of the context of real history, the significance diminishes.  If you write about a leader getting assassinated, it's not likely to have the same impact as writing a piece about 'who really shot JFK'.
The second issue is the one I touched on before: Readers have to believe it.  If the real life event is too fantastic, that can be hard.
(I was thinking of the paranormal when I posed that question.)
Mary Rosenblum:  Same thing, Gail. A book sailing gently across the room in a musty old library can be a feature article for Ghosts Magazine, since you got the cell phone shot.  But it's not going to excite the paranormal reader.  That reader has different expectations, remember? The paranormal readers want impressive events.
Yet, there still must be that dramatic arc, conflict and resolution, etc.?
Mary Rosenblum:  Yep, Gail. If you want to write for the fiction readers, that paranormal event is going to have to be second to a strong conflict and resolution.  If you're writing for Ghosts Magazine, it can be the central event that carries the piece.  Trying to turn real life into fiction without significantly changing it is usually difficult.  It can be done, but most of the time, it’s a whole lot easier to just make up the fiction story and use the real life events to write a strong personal narrative.