In my mind, if a book wants to be considered non-fiction it must be one hundred percent true. If a story with bent truths is being passed off as a book that is non-fiction, then I feel like I am being lied to and as the great Oprah Winfrey put it “duped”. I think a solution to stopping things like this from happening is making the sub-genre of “memoir” more specific by classifying completely true stories as non-fiction memoirs and half true stories “novels that are based on a true story”.
Personally, I do feel that half truths that have good stories are alright. My issue is their classification. I think that you shouldn’t take something, and call it something else that is wrong. For example, what if I took a soccer ball and sold it as a football to people who don’t know it isn’t a football. Then I said that they both have “ball” in their descriptions so they are pretty much the same thing. People would say I’m a person who lies, so why do authors get to do this?
I like how you say it its like youre being lied to but im personally fine with a bit of a stretch but no lies, lies are not part of truth but a twist is to keep the attention of the reader but nothing more.
ReplyDeleteI agree, the problem is not that they embellished the story but rather that they said they didn't.
ReplyDeleteI think non-fiction should be history boks and factual things and everything else should be memoirs cause what are the chances that you'll reember everything that happened to you in your life.
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