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When Fiction is Pure Fiction

F iction, at times, is nothing but pure fiction. There is a rule in fiction that all prophecies are true . The prophecy can come in any form, whether written on a stone or the vision of a drug addict. However it comes, it will come true, though the hero may find a loophole of some kind. I’m sure there must be exceptions, but some authors who have tried using unfulfilled prophecies have reported having trouble getting their work published. It is hard to say whether this is truly due to the belief that the prophecy should be fulfilled or whether the story just wasn’t that interesting without it being fulfilled. That may be worth exploring at another time. Another purely fictional thing we notice about fiction is that the leader of religions outside the mainstream are true in every respect. I watched Annie the other day, in which there is this Indian dude who has the ability to levitate things. No normal American would be able to do that, but because this guy is an easterner and believes...

Why Men Don't Read Fiction: A case study of a male reader.

I n general, men don’t read novels. Male readers tend to read non-fiction. There plenty of people with theories about this and some have done studies in an attempt to understand it. I’ll leave that sort of thing to them. I’ll offer instead, a case study of a male reader—that of myself. I was slow to begin reading. They stuck me in remedial reading in the second grade. It wasn’t long after that I developed a love for reading. I began to read anything I could get my hands on—literally. If someone put a book down, I would probably pick it up and begin reading. Many of those books were romance novels, because that was most of what Mom had around at the time and I quickly read through my books. I read a lot of Agatha Christi. I loved reading fantasy. I read The Owlstone Crown many times. I was interested in the Oz books for a while. School work kept me from reading part of the time, but I spent my summers reading, even when I was in college. But by that time my tastes had turned to Tom Cla...

Everything on Television Must Be True

An episode of the television show Bones reminded me of the power and danger of fiction. The A story was of little importance. The B story, however, was about a homosexual relationship between one of the main characters and her friend from college. The show’s writers pretended to show both sides of the issue by showing people who saw nothing wrong with it and showing those who do, but the homage they paid to those who see it as wrong dealt more with tradition than it did with facts. The picture they painted of the two women involved was one of apparently healthy feelings the two still have for each other. But the real kicker was when the major character said, “I am not promiscuous,” after having broken up with her boyfriend while looking for another sexual partner. This is before the scene of her kissing her lesbian girlfriend. The danger that this episode of Bones shows us is that fiction writers can make claims without providing accurate evidence to support those claims. The homosex...

Non-fiction Is Easier Than Fiction

Fiction is harder to write than non-fiction, or it should be. When you write fiction, you have to make it up as you go. When a writer writes non-fiction, he should know his subject well enough that he doesn’t have to make anything up, he just has to figure out the best order for the information and find a way to get the point across to the reader. Let me show you what I mean. A college professor has spent years studying fish. One day the dean comes to him and says, “I want you to write a book. It will make the college look better.” Now the professor could decide to write about the history of Egypt. “That will give me a chance to learn about Egypt.” But he won’t do that. Instead, he will go to his files, pull out his work from the past several years and he will write about fish. In all likelihood, he could write much of the book from memory, but he will use his work and the work of others to insure the accuracy of his statements. That brings us back to the subject of platform. Our platf...