truth is stranger than fiction argumentative essay

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Quote Origin: Truth Is Stranger than Fiction, But It Is Because Fiction Is Obliged to Stick to Possibilities; Truth Isn’t

Mark Twain? Lord Byron? G. K. Chesterton? Edward Bellamy? Humphrey Bogart? Leo Rosten? Tom Clancy?

Question for Quote Investigator: There is a wonderful quotation by Mark Twain about the implausibility of truth versus fiction. Here are four versions:

1) Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. 2) It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction must be credible. 3) Truth is stranger than fiction. It has to be! Fiction has to be possible and truth doesn’t! 4) The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.

Would you please explore this topic and determine what Twain actually said? Some versions have been credited to humorist Leo Rosten and top-selling author Tom Clancy.

Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1897 Mark Twain released a travel book titled “Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World”, and the fifteenth chapter presented the following epigraph. Boldface has been added to excerpts: 1

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.

Pudd’nhead Wilson was the name of a fictional character in a novel Twain published a few years before the travel book. Thus, Twain was the actual crafter of the remark given above. Over the years many variant phrasings have evolved.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

In 1823 Lord Byron published several cantos of his epic satirical poem “Don Juan”. The one-hundredth stanza of canto 14 included two lines indicating that momentous events sometimes capriciously hinged on other seemingly unimportant occurrences:

You’ll never guess I’ll bet you millions, milliards— It all sprung from a harmless game at billiards.

The next stanza expressed a thought about the strangeness of truth that has now become idiomatic: 2

‘Tis strange—but true; for truth is always strange, Stranger than fiction: if it could be told, How much would novels gain by the exchange! How differently the world would men behold!

In 1888 Edward Bellamy published the popular utopian novel “Looking Backward: 2000–1887” which contained a germane quotation. The main character Julian West, an insomniac, built a special chamber to block noises and hired a mesmerist to facilitate a deep sleep. A conflagration in 1887 caused West’s contemporaries to believe he had perished while his body remained hidden and preserved for more than a century. In 2000 West’s body was rediscovered and revived. He was confused and skeptical about his new situation, so he asked his discoverer for an explanation: 3

“Perhaps,” I said, “you will go on and favor me with some particulars as to the circumstances under which you discovered this chamber of which you speak, and its contents. I enjoy good fiction.” “In this case,” was the grave reply, “no fiction could be so strange as the truth.”

The above quotation was applied to one particular situation; hence, it did not quite fit the proverbial form.

In 1895 a newspaper in Delphos, Ohio printed a humorous precursor as an anonymous filler item: 4

Truth is stranger than fiction because we don’t meet it as often.

In 1897 Mark Twain included an adage comparing truth and fiction in “Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World” as mentioned previously:

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

In 1904 “Current Literature: A Magazine of Contemporary Thought” reprinted the words of Twain in an altered form. The two words “possibilities” and “isn’t” were replaced by “probability” and “ain’t”. In addition, the phrasing was changed: 5

It was Mark Twain who once remarked sagely, in the person of Pudd’nhead Wilson, that “truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction is obliged to stick to probability, and truth ain’t.”

In 1905 the noteworthy essayist and detective writer G. K. Chesterton presented a thematically related statement: 6

“Do you believe that truth is stranger than fiction?” “Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction,” said Basil, placidly. “For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.”

In 1913 “The Magazine Maker: An Informative Journal for Writers and Editors” printed an article about submitting stories to magazines, and shared the opinion that many such tales were of low quality. The author presented a quotation from John Thompson who was the editor of “Pearson’s Magazine”, and Thompson employed another variant of Twain’s statement: 7

“There is an astonishing lack of ‘naturalness’ in these stories that come to us through the mails. If the chaps who write these stories would get a little more naturalness into their yarns there would be more published. Mark Twain said ‘Truth is stranger than fiction. It has to be! Fiction has to be possible and truth doesn’t!'”

In 1914 “Pearson’s Magazine” printed an advertisement that praised forthcoming stories. Twain’s remark was rephrased yet again: 8

“Truth,” said Mark Twain, “is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be possible and truth doesn’t.”

In 1922 “McClure’s Magazine” printed a short story that uncertainly echoed the absurdist variant given several years earlier in “Pearson’s Magazine”: 9

But what was it Mark Twain said, ‘Truth’s stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be possible and truth doesn’t’?

The 1954 film “The Barefoot Contessa” included a thematically matching line spoken by the star Humphrey Bogart as recorded in “The Movie Quote Book”. The screenplay was by Joseph L. Mankiewicz: 10

“Kirk was wrong when he said I didn’t know where movie scripts left off and life began. A script has to make sense, and life doesn’t.”

In 1975 the humorist Leo Rosten published an article in “The Saturday Review” that included an instance of the adage. Rosten used an asterisk footnote to assign credit to Mark Twain: 11

“Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction?” asked the soundest psychologist the United States has produced.* “Fiction, after all, has to make sense.” Reality, of course, does not. If you doubt this, settle down as I give you a sample of some recent carryings-on of the human species. *Mark Twain.

The popular 1977 compilation “Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time” by Laurence J. Peter contained a version of the saying. Interestingly, the instance given by Peter matched the instance given by Rosten, and both were ascribed to Twain: 12

Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. —Mark Twain

In 1978 Leo Rosten published “Passions & Prejudices: Or, Some of My Best Friends Are People”, and he expressed another thematically matching notion which he ascribed to Twain: 13

For novelty, lunacy and surprise, fiction cannot begin to compete with fact. Mark Twain knew why: Fiction has to make sense . . . and life doesn’t.

In 1997 “Reader’s Digest Quotable Quotes” ascribed the following saying to Tom Clancy who was a bestselling author of military thrillers: 14

The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense. —TOM CLANCY

In 2004 an instance appeared as a puzzle solution in the long-running syndicated newspaper feature called “Celebrity Cipher”. Cryptograms for this widely-distributed column were based on “quotations by famous people past and present”: 15

“Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense.” — Leo Rosten

In 2012 the energetic quotation collector Robert Byrne published “The 2,548 Wittiest Things Anybody Ever Said”, and he included an anonymous instance of the saying: 16

The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense. —Unknown

In conclusion, there is a large family of sayings which contrast “truth/reality” and “fiction”. These adages assert that fiction must accord with possibilities or probabilities. Alternatively, they state that fiction must make sense or be credible. QI believes that this family of expressions evolved from Mark Twain’s remark published in 1897. Many different variants have been assigned to Twain; however, current evidence only supports the ascription of 1897 statement.

Image Notes: Photo of faucet sculpture fountain from Hans on Pixabay. Portrait of Mark Twain from Appleton’s Journal of July 4, 1874 via Wikimedia Commons. Image showing part of the cover of the 1897 edition of “Following the Equator” by Mark Twain.

Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Hope Dellon, Secretoriginz, and Ed Darrell who asked about this family of sayings. Dellon knew the correct Twain quotation. Their inquiries led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. Additional thanks to Brandon Miller who pointed to the quotation in Bellamy’s 1888 work.

Update History: On February 6, 2019 the 1888 Bellamy citation was added. On August 9, 2024 the format of the bibliographical notes was updated.

• 1897, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens), (Chapter 15 Epigraph), Quote Page 156, American Publishing Company, Hartford, Connecticut; Also Doubleday & McClure Company, New York. (Internet Archive) link ↩︎
• 1823, Don Juan: Cantos XIII, XIII, and XIV, Author: George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron), Canto 14, Stanza 101, Quote Page 165, Printed for John Hunt, London. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
• 1888, Looking Backward: 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy, Chapter 3, Quote Page 45 and 46, Ticknor and Company, Boston, Massachusetts. (HathiTrust Full View) link ↩︎
• 1895 August 9, The Delphos Daily Herald, (Fill item), Quote Page 2, Column 6, Delphos, Ohio. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
• 1904 December, Current Literature: A Magazine of Contemporary Thought, Volume 37, Number 6, The Original of Lady Kitty? Start Page 518, Quote Page 521, Column 1, The Current Literature Publishing Company, New York. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
• 1905, The Club of Queer Trades by Gilbert K. Chesterton, The Singular Speculation of the House-Agent, Start Page 129, Quote Page 135 and 136, Harper & Brothers, New York. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
• 1913 January, The Magazine Maker: An Informative Journal for Writers and Editors, Volume 3, Number 6, The Newspaper Story by Russell E. Smith, Start Page 11, Quote Page 13, The Hannis Jordan Company, New York. (HathiTrust Full View) link link ↩︎
• 1914 July, Pearson’s Magazine, Volume 32, Number 1, (Advertisement for stories appearing in a future issue of Pearson’s Magazine), Quote Page 112, The Pearson Publishing Company, New York, (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
• 1922 May, McClure’s Magazine, Volume 54, Number 3, Aaron Westcott’s Funeral By Viola Roseboro’, Start Page 37, Quote Page 39, Column 2, The McClure Publishing Company, New York. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
• 1980, The Movie Quote Book, Compiled by Harry Haun, Topic: Screenplays, Quote Page 293 Lippincott & Crowell, New York. (Verified on paper) ↩︎
• 1975 January 25, The Saturday Review, Diversions: This Enchanted World by Leo Rosten, Start Page 8, Quote Page 8, Column 1, Saturday Review Associates, New York. (Unz) ↩︎
• 1977, “Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time” by Laurence J. Peter, Section: Truth, Quote Page 473, William Morrow and Company, New York. (Verified on paper) ↩︎
• 1978, Passions & Prejudices: Or, Some of My Best Friends Are People by Leo Rosten, Chapter 4: The Glories of the Press, Quote Page 24, Published by McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York. (Verified on paper) ↩︎
• 1997, Reader’s Digest Quotable Quotes: Wit and Wisdom for All Occasions, Quote Page 140, Published by Reader’s Digest Association, Pleasantville, New York. (Verified on paper) ↩︎
• 2004 November 10, Santa Cruz Sentinel, Celebrity Cipher by Luis Campos, (Previous Solution), Quote Page B7, Column 5, Santa Cruz, California. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
• 2012, The 2,548 Wittiest Things Anybody Ever Said by Robert Byrne, Quote Number 855, Touchstone: A Division of Simon & Schuster, New York. (Verified on paper) ↩︎

From Mark Twain to Ray Bradbury, Iconic Writers on Truth vs. Fiction

By maria popova.

Fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie.” ~ Stephen King in On Writing

Good fiction is made of what is real, and reality is difficult to come by.” ~ Ralph Ellison in Advice to Writers

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” ~ Mark Twain in Following the Equator

Playing around with symbols, even as a critic, can be a kind of kiddish parlor game. A little of it goes a long way. There are other things of greater value in any novel or story… humanity, character analysis, truth on other levels, etc., etc. Good symbolism should be as natural as breathing… and as unobtrusive.” ~ Ray Bradbury

The problem with fiction, it has to be plausible. That’s not true with non-fiction.” ~ Tom Wolfe in Advice to Writers

Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.” ~ Tennessee Williams in The Glass Menagerie

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt in The Autobiography Of Eleanor Roosevelt

You should never read just for ‘enjoyment.’ Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends’ insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick ‘hard books.’ Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god’s sake, don’t let me ever hear you say, ‘I can’t read fiction. I only have time for the truth.’ Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of ‘literature’? That means fiction, too, stupid.” ~ John Waters in Role Models

Fiction that adds up, that suggests a ‘logical consistency,’ or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.” ~ Joyce Carol Oates in The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982

The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.” ~ Wallace Stevens in Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose

Art, though, is never the voice of a country; it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the individual, doing its best to speak, not comfort of any sort, but truth. And the art that speaks it most unmistakably, most directly, most variously, most fully, is fiction; in particular, the novel.” ~ Eudora Welty in On Writing

We have our Arts so we won’t die of Truth.” ~ Ray Bradbury in Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

— Published January 27, 2012 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/01/27/famous-authors-on-truth-vs-fiction/ —

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Truth is stranger than fiction

What's the meaning of the phrase 'truth is stranger than fiction', what's the origin of the phrase 'truth is stranger than fiction'.

‘ Tis strange – but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction; if it could be told, How much would novels gain by the exchange! How differently the world would men behold! How oft would vice and virtue places change! The new world would be nothing to the old, If some Columbus of the moral seas Would show mankind their souls’ antipodes.

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Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction: Don Juan and the Truth Claims of Genre

2016, Modern Language Quarterly

Related Papers

Nicholas Halmi

An epic-length poem without a determinate plan, and therefore remarkably accommodating of contingency, Byron’s Don Juan is founded on a distinctly modern understanding of reality as a subjectively realizable potentiality. But just as traditional and novel literary forms can coexist with each other, so can existing and emergent concepts of reality, however uneasily. In Don Juan the tension between this new concept of reality and that presupposed by the theory of artistic mimesis manifests itself in Byron’s flouting of the same epic conventions to which he professes his adherence.

Critical Review, 39

Richard Lansdown

A discussion of the relation between Byron's comic epic and nineteenth-century British fiction

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Byron's epic poem, Don Juan, addresses so many issues that it is difficult to narrow the scope of the poem to just one or two. Is the poem an attack on what was current Romantic Era ideology? Is the poem about love and romance? Is it primarily social commentary? Is the poem a description of the Fall of Man? Could it be Byron's own attempt at self therapy? Does the poem hold to a specific world view and if so, is it inherently nihilistic or is the poem actually a moral poem endorsing traditional principles? What, finally, is the poem about? These questions, and more, are some of the relevant issues raised when analyzing Don Juan. As it is certainly likely that Byron is rebelling against stringent Calvinistic principles, it would be remiss to construe the poem as part of the "Either/Or" Syndrome (positive/moral-negative/nihilistic, good/bad, cold/hot, heaven.hell, et cetera). Rather, the poem is a manifestation of Byron's own existential frustration - a complex masterpiece therapeutically exercising human angst and effectively addressing all of the previously mentioned issues. And unlike the angry existential philosophers who follow him some years later, Byron's existential vision is a theistic one: a vision comprised of isolation and loneliness while encompassing a compassion for humanity as a greater whole.

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Agnes Péter

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My aims in this dissertation are to discern the representations of masculinity, gender, and sexuality in the nineteenth century through the prism of the Don Juan legend and to assert what the use of such a virile character reveals about the nature and obsessions of the society that chose to use it so persistently. Does this literary proliferation reveal a crisis in nineteenth-century French masculinity? Is Don Juan presented as a model of virility which must be followed, or as an Orientalised symbol of hyper-masculinity, a ‘foreign vice’ to be avoided and set as an example of a cultural countertype against which French men must model their own masculinity? What do Don Juan’s numerous transgressions and his ultimate lack of punishment in the nineteenth-century rewritings tell us about the society which produced them? Taking Tirso de Molina's 'Burlador de Sevilla' and Molière's 'Dom Juan' as a starting point, I lead an interrogation of Balzac’s ‘L’Élixir de longue vie’ (1830), as well as a comparison of Mérimée’s ‘Les Âmes du purgatoire’ (1834) and Barbey d’Aurevilly’s ‘Le plus bel amour de Don Juan’ (1874). What emerges from this series of readings is a further re-imagination of Don Juan as an opponent of patriarchal, societal norms via both religious and sexual transgression in an attempt to assert his position within the hierarchy of power. These original analyses will turn our attention away from traditional tropes often associated with Don Juan such as performance and caricature of gender roles towards new ground, most notably that of religious transgression, which in the light of my readings, will emerge as a central concern of the Don Juan myth.

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Read it First: Truth is Stranger Than Fiction

Last month we took a look at the lives of famous authors as shown in popular films. And while that was a fun way to learn more about the authors we know and love, we all know that sometimes films take creative license to make their stories more interesting. This time around, we’re looking at cold hard facts. Below we’ve featured several documentaries about writers that may just be even more fantastic than their fictional counterparts. Did you know that Maya Angelou was mute for five years? Or that Gabriel García Márquez was once punched in the face by Mario Vargas Llosa? As they say, truth is stranger (and sometimes even more entertaining) than fiction.

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Why do we say "Truth is stranger than fiction"?

Well-known expressions, truth is stranger than fiction.

Sometimes the facts can be harder to believe than fiction

Background:

The first recorded use of this expression in its modern form is in Lord Byron's Don Juan (1823): 'Tis strange -- but true; for truth is always strange;      Stranger than fiction; if it could be told, How much would novels gain by the exchange!      How differently the world would men behold! How oft would vice and virtue places change!      The new world would be nothing to the old, If some Columbus of the moral seas Would show mankind their souls' antipodes. - George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron), Don Juan , Canto the Fourteenth, Verse 101

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word histories

“ad fontes!”

‘truth is stranger than fiction’: meaning and origin

The phrase truth is stranger than fiction means: real events and situations are often more remarkable or incredible than those made up in fiction.

This phrase occurs, for example, in the review of the second season of the U.S. television series The White Lotus —review by Abigail Buchanan, published in the National Post (Toronto, Ontario, Canada ) of Saturday 14 th January 2023:

The second season of The White Lotus, a tragicomedy of manners on Crave, is set in an exclusive Sicilian resort. The cast is a gang of moneyed, miserable holidaymakers who have paid a premium for la dolce vita, and the long-suffering staff who must cater to their every whim. It’s the perfect vehicle for satire. But when it comes to how the ultra-wealthy holiday in real life, the truth is stranger than fiction.

The notion expressed by truth is stranger than fiction existed before the phrase was coined. The following, for example, is from the review of Extract of the exact Description of the House of Ice , erected at St. Petersburg in January, 1740; and of it’s [sic] Furniture , by Georg Wolfgang Kraft (1701-1754)—review published in The Maryland Gazette (Annapolis, Province of Maryland, British North-American colonies) of Wednesday 30 th August 1749:

When we read in the Fairy Tales, or other romances, of certain wonders, as transparent palaces, or such like, we think such stories quite ridiculous, and beyond nature. It is always for want of knowing nature well, that such writers have recourse to such miraculous descriptions. Nature, narrowly and studiously observed, presents us with realities more surprizingly [sic] astonishing, than the strongest imagination could ever produce, or the liveliest fancy describe.

This phrase first occurred as truth is always strange, stranger than fiction in Don Juan. Cantos XII.—XIII.—and XIV. (London: Printed for John Hunt, 1823), by the English poet George Gordon Byron (1788-1824):

Canto XIV – CI. ’Tis strange—but true; for Truth is always strange, Stranger than Fiction: if it could be told, How much would novels gain by the exchange; How differently the world would men behold! How oft would vice and virtue places change! The new world would be nothing to the old, If some Columbus of the moral seas Would show mankind their soul’s Antipodes.

The phrase then occurred as truth is stranger than fiction , and with explicit reference to Byron’s Don Juan , in the transcript of a remark made by one of the magistrates during a court case at Lambeth-street Police-office, London, published in The Sun (London, England ) of Friday 2 nd May 1828:

Mr. Wyatt observed, that never had he heard of a case that abounded with more extraordinary incidents than the present. It appeared more like a tale of romance than an occurrence in common life; and were it not that the circumstances were so well authenticated, would be absolutely incredible; it, in fact, verified the remark of Byron, that “truth is stranger than fiction.”

The phrase then occurred as truth is stranger than fiction , and without explicit reference to Byron’s Don Juan , in the transcript of William Corder’s defence, during his trial for murder, at Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, published in The Courier (London, England ) of Saturday 9 th August 1828:

“It has been well observed, ‘That truth is sometimes stranger than fiction,’ and never was the observation more strongly exemplified than in my life, and the circumstances connected with the extraordinary occurrences which have led to the present charge.”

The earliest occurrence that I have found of the variant with fact(s) instead of truth is a misquotation from Byron’s Don Juan —it is from the Wakefield Journal; and West Riding Herald (Wakefield, Yorkshire , England) of Friday 13 th September 1839:

The nomination of that most pragmatical plebian—that “novus homo,” as he has been styled—Mr. Poulett Thomson, to an office from which that pompous Peer, the atrabilarious Earl of Durham, so gallantly and opportunely ran away, is a ludicrous, and at the same time a lamentable illustration of Lord Byron’s dictum, that “facts are stranger than fictions.”

The variant then occurred in the title of a short story by the U.S. author John Neal (1793-1876)—as advertised in The Evening Post (New York City, New York, USA) of Friday 14 th February 1840:

THE NEW WORLD Of Saturday, February 15 th , will contain an original story of deep interest, founded on real events, entitled “The Tragedy of Errors; or Facts stranger than Fictions,” by John Neal.

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"Truth is Stranger than Fiction." Or is it?

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The Line Between Fact and Fiction

Journalists should report the truth. Who would deny it? But such a statement does not get us far enough, for it fails to distinguish nonfiction from other forms of expression. Novelists can reveal great truths about the human condition, and so can poets, film makers and painters. Artists, after all, build things that imitate the world. So do nonfiction writers.

To make things more complicated, writers of fiction use fact to make their work believable. They do research to create authentic settings into which we enter. They return us to historical periods and places that can be accurately chronicled and described: the battlefield at Gettysburg, the Museum of Natural History in New York City, a jazz club in Detroit. They use detail to make us see, to suspend our disbelief, to persuade us it was “really like that.”

For centuries writers of nonfiction have borrowed the tools of novelists to reveal truths that could be exposed and rendered in no better way. They place characters in scenes and settings, have them speak to each other in dialogue, reveal limited points of view, and move through time over conflicts and toward resolutions.

In spite of occasional journalism scandals that hit the national landscape like plane crashes, our standards are higher than ever. Historical examples of nonfiction contain lots of made-up stuff. It appears as if, 50 years ago, many columnists, sports writers and crime reporters—to name the obvious categories—were licensed to invent. The term piping— making up quotes or inventing sources—came from the idea that the reporter was high from covering the police busts of opium dens.

Testimony on our shady past comes from Stanley Walker, the legendary city editor of the New York Herald Tribune. In 1934 he wrote about the “monumental fakes” that were part of the history of journalism and offered:

It is true that, among the better papers, there is a general professional condemnation of fakers. And yet it is strange that so many of the younger men, just coming into the business, appear to feel that a little faking here and there is a mark of distinction. One young man, who had written a good story, replete with direct quotation and description, was asked by the city desk how he could have obtained such detail, as most of the action had been completed before he had been assigned to the story. “Well,” said the young man, “I thought that since the main facts were correct it wouldn’t do any harm to invent the conversation as I thought it must have taken place.” The young man was soon disabused.

In more recent times and into the present, influential writers have worked in hybrid forms with names such as “creative nonfiction” or the “nonfiction novel.” Tom Rosenstiel catalogues the confusion:

The line between fact and fiction in America, between what is real and made up, is blurring. The move in journalism toward infotainment invites just such confusion, as news becomes entertainment and entertainment becomes news. Deals in which editor Tina Brown joins the forces of a news company, Hearst, with a movie studio, Miramax, to create a magazine that would blend reporting and script writing are only the latest headlines signaling the blending of cultures. Prime time news magazines, featuring soap opera stories or heroic rescue videos, are developing a growing resemblance to reality entertainment shows such as “Cops,” or Fox programs about daring rescues or wild animal attack videos. Book authors such as John Berendt condense events and use “composite” characters in supposedly nonfiction work, offering only a brief allusion in an authors note to help clarify what might be real and what might not. Newspaper columnists are found out, and later removed, from the Boston Globe for confusing journalism and literature. A writer at the New Republic gains fame for material that is too good to be true. A federal court in the case of Janet Malcolm rules that journalists can make up quotes if they somehow are true to the spirit of what someone might have said. Writer Richard Reeves sees a deepening threat beyond journalism to society more generally, a threat he calls evocatively the “Oliver Stoning” of American culture.

The controversies continue. Edmund Morris creates fictional characters in his authorized biography of Ronald Reagan; CBS News uses digital technology to alter the sign of a competitor in Times Square during the coverage of the millennium celebration; a purported memoir of a wife of Wyatt Earp, published by a university press, turns out to contain fiction. Its author, Glenn G. Boyer, defends his book as a work of “creative nonfiction.”

To make things more complicated, scholars have demonstrated the essential fictive nature of all memory. The way we remember things is not necessarily the way they were. This makes memoir, by definition, a problematic form in which reality and imagination blur into what its proponents describe as a “fourth genre.” The problems of memory also infect journalism when reporters—in describing the memories of sources and witnesses—wind up lending authority to a kind of fiction.

The post-modernist might think all this irrelevant, arguing that there are no facts, only points of view, only “takes” on reality, influenced by our personal histories, our cultures, our race and gender, our social class. The best journalists can do in such a world is to offer multiple frames through which events and issues can be seen. Report the truth? they ask. Whose truth?

Caught in the web of such complexity, one is tempted to find some simple escape routes before the spider bites. If there were only a set of basic principles to help journalists navigate the waters between fact and fiction, especially those areas between the rocks. Such principles exist. They can be drawn from the collective experience of many journalists, from our conversations, debates and forums, from the work of writers such as John Hersey and Anna Quindlen, from stylebooks and codes of ethics, standards and practices.

Hersey made an unambiguous case for drawing a bold line between fiction and nonfiction, that the legend on the journalists license should read “None of this was made up.” The author of Hiroshima , Hersey used a composite character in at least one early work, but by 1980 he expressed polite indignation that his work had become a model for the so-called New Journalists. His essay in the Yale Review questioned the writing strategies of Truman Capote, Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe.

Hersey draws an important distinction, a crucial one for our purposes. He admits that subjectivity and selectivity are necessary and inevitable in journalism. If you gather 10 facts but wind up using nine, subjectivity sets in. This process of subtraction can lead to distortion. Context can drop out, or history, or nuance, or qualification or alternative perspectives.

While subtraction may distort the reality the journalist is trying to represent, the result is still nonfiction, is still journalism. The addition of invented material, however, changes the nature of the beast. When we add a scene that did not occur or a quote that was never uttered, we cross the line into fiction. And we deceive the reader.

This distinction leads us to two cornerstone principles: Do not add. Do not deceive. Lets elaborate on each:

Do not add . This means that writers of nonfiction should not add to a report things that did not happen. To make news clear and comprehensible, it is often necessary to subtract or condense. Done without care or responsibility, even such subtraction can distort. We cross a more definite line into fiction, however, when we invent or add facts or images or sounds that were not there.

Do not deceive . This means that journalists should never mislead the public in reproducing events. The implied contract of all nonfiction is binding: The way it is represented here is, to the best of our knowledge, the way it happened. Anything that intentionally or unintentionally fools the audience violates that contract and the core purpose of journalism—to get at the truth. Thus, any exception to the implied contract—even a work of humor or satire—should be transparent or disclosed.

To make these cornerstone principles definitive, we have stated them in the simplest language. In so doing, we may cause confusion by failing to exemplify these rules persuasively or by not offering reasonable exceptions. For example, by saying “Do not deceive,” we are talking about the promise the journalist makes to the audience. A different argument concerns whether journalists can use deception as an investigative strategy. There is honest disagreement about that, but even if you go undercover to dig for news, you have a duty not to fool the public about what you discovered.

Because these two principles are stated negatively, we decided not to nag journalists with an endless list of “Thou shalt nots.” So we’ve expressed four supporting strategies in a positive manner.

Be unobtrusive . This guideline invites writers to work hard to gain access to people and events, to spend time, to hang around, to become such a part of the scenery that they can observe conditions in an unaltered state. This helps avoid the “Heisenberg effect,” a principle drawn from science, in which observing an event changes it. Even watchdogs can be alert without being obtrusive.

We realize that some circumstances require journalists to call attention to themselves and their processes. So we have nothing against Sam Donaldson for yelling questions at a president who turns a deaf ear to reporters. Go ahead and confront the greedy, the corrupt, the secret mongers; but the more reporters obtrude and intrude, especially when they are also obnoxious, the more they risk changing the behavior of those they are investigating.

Stories should not only be true, they should ring true. Reporters know by experience that truth can be stranger than fiction, that a man can walk into a convenience store in St. Petersburg, Fla., and shoot the clerk in the head and that the bullet can bounce off his head, ricochet off a ceiling beam, and puncture a box of cookies.

If we ruled the world of journalism—as if it could be ruled—we would ban the use of anonymous sources, except in cases where the source is especially vulnerable and the news is of great import. Some whistleblowers who expose great wrongdoing fall into this category. A person who has migrated illegally into America may want to share his or her experience without fear of deportation. But the journalist must make every effort to make this character real. An AIDS patient may want and deserve anonymity, but making public the name of his doctor and his clinic can help dispel any cloud of fiction.

Fired Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle writes:

I used my memory to tell true tales of the city, things that happened to real people who shared their own lives with me. They represented the music and flavor of the time. They were stories that sat on the shelf of my institutional memory and spoke to a larger point. The use of parables was not a technique I invented. It was established ages ago by other newspaper columnists, many more gifted than I, some long since dead.

A parable is defined as a “simple story with a moral lesson.” The problem is that we know them from religious literature or ancient beast fables. They were fictional forms, filled with hyperbole. Mike Barnicle was passing them off as truth, without doing the reporting that would give them the ring of truth.

In the Middle Ages, perhaps, it could be argued that the literal truth of a story was not important. More important were the higher levels of meaning: how stories reflected salvation history, moral truth or the New Jerusalem. Some contemporary nonfiction authors defend invention in the name of reaching for some higher truth. We deem such claims unjustifiable.

The next guideline is to make sure things check out . Stated with more muscle: Never put something in print or on the air that hasn’t checked out. The new media climate makes this exceedingly difficult. News cycles that once changed by the day, or maybe by the hour, now change by the minute or second. Cable news programs run 24 hours, greedy for content. And more and more stories have been broken on the Internet, in the middle of the night, when newspaper reporters and editors are tucked dreamily in their beds. The imperative to go live and to look live is stronger and stronger, creating the appearance that news is “up to the minute” or “up to the second.”

Time frenzy, however, is the enemy of clear judgment. Taking time allows for checking, for coverage that is proportional, for consultation and for sound decision-making that, in the long run, will avoid embarrassing mistakes and clumsy retractions.

In a culture of media bravado, there is plenty of room for a little strategic humility . This virtue teaches us that Truth—with a capital T—is unattainable, that even though you can never get it, that with hard work you can get at it you can gain on it. Humility leads to respect for points of view that differ from our own, attention to which enriches our reporting. It requires us to recognize the unhealthy influences of careerism and profiteering, forces that may tempt us to tweak a quote or bend a rule or snatch a phrase or even invent a source.

So lets restate these, using slightly different language. First the cornerstone principles: The journalist should not add to a story things that didn’t happen. And the journalist should not fool the public.

Then the supporting strategies: The journalist should try to get at stories without altering them. The reporting should dispel any sense of phoniness in the story. Journalists should check things out or leave them out. And, most important, a little humility about your ability to truly know something will make you work harder at getting it right.

These principles have meaning only in the light of a large idea, crucial to democratic life: that there is a world out there that is knowable. That the stories we create correspond to what exists in the world. That if we describe a velvet painting of John Wayne hanging in a barber shop, it was not really one of Elvis in a barbecue joint. That the words between quotation marks correspond to what was spoken. That the shoes in the photo were the ones worn by the man when the photo was taken and not added later. That what we are watching on television is real and not a staged re-enactment.

A tradition of verisimilitude and reliable sourcing can be traced to the first American newspapers. Three centuries before the recent scandals, a Boston newspaper called Publick Occurrences made this claim on September 25, 1690: “… nothing shall be entered, but what we have reason to believe is true, repairing to the best fountains for our Information.”

We assert, then, that the principles of “Do not add” and “Do not deceive” should apply to all nonfiction all the time, not just to written stories in newspapers. Adding color to a black-and-white photo—unless the technique is obvious or labeled—is a deception. Digitally removing an element in a photo, or adding one or shifting one or reproducing one—no matter how visually arresting—is a deception, completely different in kind from traditional photo cropping, although that, too, can be done irresponsibly.

In an effort to get at some difficult truths, reporters and writers have at times resorted to unconventional and controversial practices. These include such techniques as composite characters, conflation of time, and interior monologues. It may be helpful to test these techniques against our standards.

The use of composite characters, where the purpose is to deceive the reader into believing that several characters are one, is a technique of fiction that has no place in journalism or other works that purport to be nonfiction.

An absolute prohibition against composites seems necessary, given a history of abuse of this method in works that passed themselves off as real. Although considered one of the great nonfiction writers of his time, Joseph Mitchell would, late in life, label some of his past work as fiction because it depended on composites. Even John Hersey, who became known for drawing thick lines between fiction and nonfiction, used composites in “Joe Is Home Now,” a 1944 Life magazine story about wounded soldiers returning from war.

The practice has been continued, defended by some, into the 1990s. Mimi Schwartz acknowledges that she uses composites in her memoirs in order to protect the privacy of people who didn’t ask to be in her books. “I had three friends who were thinking about divorce, so in the book, I made a composite character, and we met for cappuccino.” While such considerations may be well-meaning, they violate the contract with the reader not to mislead. When the reader reads that Schwartz was drinking coffee with a friend and confidante, there is no expectation that there were really three friends. If the reader is expected to accept that possibility, then maybe that cappuccino was really a margarita. Maybe they discussed politics rather than divorce. Who knows?

Time and chronology are often difficult to manage in complicated stories. Time is sometimes imprecise, ambiguous or irrelevant. But the conflation of time that deceives readers into thinking a month was a week, a week a day, or a day an hour is unacceptable to works of journalism and nonfiction. In his authors note to the best-seller Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil , John Berendt concedes:

Though this is a work of nonfiction, I have taken certain storytelling liberties, particularly having to do with the time of events. Where the narrative strays from strict nonfiction, my intention has been to remain faithful to the characters and to the essential drift of events as they really happened.

The second sentence is no justification for the first. Authors cannot have it both ways, using bits of fiction to liven up the story while desiring a spot on the New York Times nonfiction list.

Contrast Berendts vague statement to the one G. Wayne Miller offers at the beginning of King of Hearts , a book about the pioneers of open-heart surgery:

This is entirely a work of nonfiction; it contains no composite characters or scenes, and no names have been changed. Nothing has been invented. The author has used direct quotations only when he heard or saw (as in a letter) the words, and he paraphrased all other dialogues and statements—omitting quotations marks—once he was satisfied that these took place.

The interior monologue, in which the reporter seems to get into the head of a source, is a dangerous strategy but permissible in the most limited circumstances. It requires direct access to the source, who must be interviewed about his or her thoughts. Boston University writer-in-residence Mark Kramer suggests, “No attribution of thoughts to sources unless the sources have said they’d had those very thoughts.”

This technique should be practiced with the greatest care. Editors should always question reporters on the sources of knowledge as to what someone was thinking. Because, by definition, what goes on in the head is invisible, the reporting standards must be higher than usual. When in doubt, attribute.

Such guidelines should not be considered hostile to the devices of fiction that can be applied, after in-depth reporting, to journalism. These include, according to Tom Wolfe, setting scenes, using dialogue, finding details that reveal character and describing things from a character’s point of view. NBC News correspondent John Larson and Seattle Times editor Rick Zahler both encourage the reporter at times to convert the famous Five Ws into the raw material of storytelling, so that Who becomes Character, Where becomes Setting, and When becomes Chronology.

But the more we venture into that territory, the more we need a good map and an accurate compass. John McPhee, as quoted by Norman Sims, summarizes the key imperatives:

The nonfiction writer is communicating with the reader about real people in real places. So if those people talk, you say what those people said. You don’t say what the writer decides they said. You don’t make up dialogue. You don’t make a composite character. Where I came from, a composite character was a fiction. So when somebody makes a nonfiction character out of three people who are real, that is a fictional character in my opinion. And you don’t get inside their heads and think for them. You can’t interview the dead. You could make a list of the things you don’t do. Where writers abridge that, they hitchhike on the credibility of writers who don’t.

This leads us to the conviction that there should be a firm line, not a fuzzy one, between fiction and nonfiction and that all work that purports to be nonfiction should strive to achieve the standards of the most truthful journalism. Labels such as “nonfiction novel,” “real-life novel,” “creative nonfiction” and “docudrama” may not be useful to that end.

Such standards do not deny the value of storytelling in journalism, or of creativity or of pure fiction, when it is apparent or labeled. Which leads us to the Dave Barry exception, a plea for more creative humor in journalism, even when it leads to sentences such as “I did not make this up.”

We can find many interesting exceptions, gray areas that would test all of these standards. Howard Berkes of National Public Radio once interviewed a man who stuttered badly. The story was not about speech impediments. “How would you feel,” Berkes asked the man, “if I edited the tape to make you not stutter?” The man was delighted and the tape edited. Is this the creation of a fiction? A deception of the listener? Or is it the marriage of courtesy for the source and concern for the audience?

I come to these issues not as the rider of too high a horse but as a struggling equestrian with some distinctively writerly aspirations. I want to test conventions. I want to create new forms. I want to merge nonfiction genres. I want to create stories that are the center of the days conversation in the newsroom and in the community. 

In a 1996 series on AIDS, I tried to re-create in scene and dramatic dialogue the excruciating experiences of a woman whose husband had died of the disease. How do you describe a scene that took place years ago in a little hospital room in Spain, working from one person’s memory of the event?

In my 1997 series on growing up Catholic with a Jewish grandmother, I tried to combine memoir with reporting, oral history and some light theology to explore issues such as anti-Semitism, cultural identity and the Holocaust. But consider this problem: Along the way, I tell the story of a young boy I knew who grew up with a fascination with Nazis and constantly made fun of Jews. I have no idea what kind of man he became. For all I know, he is one of the relief workers in Kosovo. How do I create for him—and myself—a protective veil without turning him into a fictional character?

And finally, in 1999 I wrote my first novel, which was commissioned by the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group and distributed by the New York Times Syndicate. It appeared in about 25 newspapers. This 29-chapter serial novel about the millennium taught me from the inside out some of the distinctions between fiction and nonfiction.

There is certainly an argument to be made that fiction—even labeled fiction—has no place in the newspaper. I respect that. Thirty inches of novella a day may require a loss of precious newshole. But do we think less of John McPhee’s nonfiction in the New Yorker because it may sit next to a short story by John Updike?

It is not the fiction thats the problem, but the deception.

Hugh Kenner describes the language of journalism as:

… the artifice of seeming to be grounded outside language in what is called fact—the domain where a condemned man can be observed as he silently avoids a puddle and your prose will report the observation and no one will doubt it.

British scholar John Carey puts it this way:

Reportage may change its readers, may educate their sympathies, may extend—in both directions—their ideas about what it is to be a human being, may limit their capacity for the inhuman. These gains have traditionally been claimed for imaginative literature. But since reportage, unlike literature, lifts the screen from reality, its lessons are—and ought to be—more telling; and since it reaches millions untouched by literature, it has an incalculably greater potential.

So don’t add and don’t deceive. If you try something unconventional, let the public in on it. Gain on the truth. Be creative. Do your duty. Have some fun. Be humble. Spend your life thinking and talking about how to do all these well.

Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — Stranger Than Fiction — The Benefit Of Using Postmodern Characteristics In “Stranger Than Fiction” 

The Benefit of Using Postmodern Characteristics in "Stranger than Fiction" 

• Categories: Postmodernism Stranger Than Fiction

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Published: Mar 19, 2020

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Stranger than Fiction

By marc forster.

• Stranger than Fiction Summary

Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) works for the Internal Revenue Service and lives a markedly routine and boring life. That is, until he audits Ana Pascal , a baker. The two like each other, and a romance begins. Surprisingly, that same day, Crick starts hearing the mysterious voice of a woman narrating his life. It doesn't take him long to realize that he is the only one that can hear it. When Harold's watch stops working soon after, he asks someone on the street to tell him the time as the strange voice says, "little did he know that this simple, seemingly innocuous act would result in his imminent death". Naturally, this news startles Harold and he tries to find some answers to the mystery of the disembodied voice. He consults with Jules Hilbert, a renowned literary professor. Hilbert tells Harold to first determine what the voice is doing, if it is some kind of story, what that story is about, and to what genre it belongs.

Determined to turn his life into a comedy rather than a tragedy, Crick visits Ana's bakery and they get a little closer, but Ana gets angry when Harold doesn't accept the cookies that she made for him. Jules suggests that Harold stay home one day and do nothing, and see if there are external forces working on his life. While innocently sitting in his apartment, the building shakes, and Harold finds that it has been partly demolished by a wrecking crew, who were under the impression that the building was empty. With no other choice than to embrace life, Harold tries to do more interesting things and live a more fulfilling life. He takes a vacation, purchases a guitar, and gets closer to Ana. Things seem to be getting better for Harold.

Harold reports back to Jules that his story is most likely a happy one, a comedy. He thinks he might be in the clear until, while watching television, he sees an interview with Karen Eiffel , who has the same voice as the strange narrator. Jules tells Harold that Eiffel is famous for killing off her main characters in ingenious ways.

Frantically, Harold gets in touch with the reclusive Karen and tells her that he is experiencing everything that she writes. She is terrified to hear that she actually has control over someone else's life. She has not yet finished the book, and has not written Harold's death. After giving it some thought and reading the manuscript, Harold tells Karen that she can kill him if she wants, because she is such a wonderful writer.

One day, Harold is on his way to work and he sees a child on a bike accidentally skidding into the street as a bus speeds towards them. Harold leaps into the road, pushing the child out of the way and getting hit himself. While it seems like Harold might die, his wristwatch gets lodged in a part of his body that might otherwise bleed out, and he is saved.

Stranger than Fiction Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Stranger than Fiction is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Study Guide for Stranger than Fiction

Stranger than Fiction study guide contains a biography of director Marc Forster, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Stranger than Fiction
• Character List
• Director's Influence

Wikipedia Entries for Stranger than Fiction

• Introduction