Fiction vs. Non-Fiction

My students had some questions and moments of confusion when they recently completed some discussion board postings. I decided to write a quick FAQ for them, and also post it here for future reference. I'd love to see your thoughts on what else I should include. 

Fiction vs. Non-Fiction FAQ

Which is which?

Fiction is made up. Something that is fictional is NOT real.

Non-Fiction is factual, or real. I know, this seems like it’s backwards from how it should be. But English often doesn’t make any sense.

Similarly:

Novels are always fictional. They are made up. Therefore, not every book is a novel. In fact, most are not.

Non-fiction can be referred to as a text or a book when you are discussing it. Or, for shorter pieces, call them articles or essays.

Is that it? Why do we need a FAQ?

Well, here’s some more subtleties that we can think on:

What about if something really happened in the past and an author wrote a novel about it?

Well, there’s such a thing as historical fiction which means an author takes a historical moment in time and writes about it from a made-up point of view. This is still fiction because the characters and situations come from the author’s imagination. Examples of this sort of book are The Book Thief, The Help, Secret Life of Bees, The Other Boleyn Girl, and Number the Stars.

But what if it’s about a real historical person?

You may also find a novel from the perspective of a person who actually lived. One way to tell if you’re reading fiction or non-fiction in this case is to see if the text is labeled a biography (non-fiction) or a novel (fiction). You can also look for footnotes or references at the end of the book (see below). An example of a fictional text that has a character who did actually live would be Annexed, the story of Diary of Anne Frank told from Peter van Pel’s perspective. Wolf Hall and In the Time of the Butterflies are also examples of this kind of book.

Okay, but what about a book like Devil in the White City? That talks about actual people from the past, but reads like a story.

The difference between Erik Larson’s books and the fictional examples above is in how the authors gather material for their books. In Devil in the White City or others like it, the author will include many notes at the back of the book telling you where the information comes from. They will also often include a prelude or afterword explaining their process of writing. Many popular history texts (like Seabiscuit) will read like a story, yet be carefully footnoted. Importantly, every word a character says comes from either historical record OR interviews (like In Cold Blood), depending on when the book was written. All the dialogue the characters say are words they actually said or wrote, and are not from the author’s imagination.

So what's a memoir?

Well, we tend to assume that memoirs are non-fiction. And most are. Of course, we need to consider the slippery nature of memory itself here and realize our brains are always making things up and filling details in. This is why eyewitness testimony is often unreliable. Just because someone experienced an event, we can't say we have the "truth" from any one description (or even many, because there are all kinds of motivations one might have). Still, readers believe there is "truth" or "authenticity" (both complicated terms on their own) behind a memoir, which is why A Million Little Pieces and Fragments were both so vilified when people discovered they were partially or completely fabricated (i.e. fictional). Here's a little more on the difference between memoir, autobiography, and biography. 

Both of these last two (popular history, memoir) are often referred to as creative non-fiction.