My thoughts on Non-fiction and Labeling

I believe that if you claim that your book is non-fiction then there should be no embellishments.  We have writing techniques to make things more interesting; people should not have to resort to telling lies or half-truths to make the story better.  You can zoom in on a moment or do any number of things to improve the story without lying in it.  While I admit that things can be difficult to remember you should always stay on track with events that actually happened instead of making things up or misrepresenting facts.

Half-truths in nonfiction tend to call into question the person’s motives when used in a supposed non-fiction book.  Since when people say non-fiction the automatic assumption is that the book will only be the truth and nothing but the truth.  The fact that they tried to over exaggerate events in the book would be understandable if the book was not considered an entirely non-fiction piece.  However since it is a non-fiction book then the exaggerations are unacceptable, because it was likely not necessary for the writer to do.  As I’ve said before there are other ways to make a book more interesting than to make up things or exaggerate facts.

I believe that the lines between fiction and non-fiction and the rest of the genres should remain intact because people know that they like certain things.  The book labels then help them find books that they know are to their liking.  While I believe that books should be labeled, I do not believe that authors should be labeled as writers for any particular type of fiction.  Once someone is labeled then the expectation is created that the author writes in a particular genre.  Once the expectation is there, if the author ends up writing something that doesn’t fit into his/her designated genre  there is a cry of outrage from their readers and other readers as well.

As for the notion that no idea is original I believe that to some extent this is true.  However this belief only applies to the absolute baseline.  Stories are unique not because of their base plot but because of the events that happen in each or the new angle that an author might bring to the field.