Tag: lies

• October 1, 2017

  Lies, Damn Lies and Fiction

  

  Two years ago, I read a short story I had written called “The Cannibals of Kitsap.” The story follows a boy who develops an eating disorder after his father loses his job. After the reading, a woman walked up to ask me how the story ended. “Did your father find another job after that,” she asked. I was thrown off. She thought the plot was autobiographical, that this had actually happened to me. I had to admit that everything was fabricated, based on an idea I’d had rather than reality.

  As writers, one of the first pieces of advice many of us receives is to “write what you know.” Some people take that advice literally and only write about their own experience. Many readers have caught on and expect that the all fiction is thinly veiled personal recollection. That may work for some writers, but my life isn’t all that interesting. Fiction should be grounded in reality, but I don’t like limiting myself to my own life. My imagination is not that small, nor are those of most writers I know.

  This week, I’ll be playing with the idea of truth and lies in fiction as part of the third annual Creative Colloquy Crawl. I’ll be hosting a reading at on Tuesday, October 3 at 8pm at Doyle’s Public House called “Lies, Damn Lies and Fiction.” Local writers Jenni Prange Boran, Sam Snoek-Brown and Jonah Barrett will share stories and then we’ll have a Q&A style discussion about what in their work is based on true events and what is made-up. The Creative Colloquy Crawl is a literary pub crawl in downtown Tacoma that brings together lovers of the written word together for an evening of great storytelling. I hope to see you there!

  — 30 —

  Jonny Eberle is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker in Tacoma, WA. His fiction has appeared in Creative Colloquy.

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• May 10, 2016

  No-Good, Rotten Liars Like Me

  

  “Writers are liars, my dear, surely you know that by now? And yet, things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.” – Neil Gaiman, The Sandman

  Last year, I read a short story of mine at Creative Colloquy, a local reading event in Tacoma. The story is about a boy who develops an eating disorder after his father is laid off from his job. Afterward, a woman asked me how long my father was out of work. She seemed a little confused when I explained that nothing in the story had actually happened and that the first person narrator wasn’t me, but a character I invented.

  I took it as a compliment. It takes a lot of work to write a good story and even more to infuse enough realism in detail, dialogue and emotion to pass it off as truth. If I’ve hoodwinked you into believing that my fictions are fact, then I have succeeded.

  As writers, lies are our business. We’re no-good, rotten liars. Every single one of us. Tricksters and charlatans with pens and laptops. We’re those not-to-be-trusted adults who never quite grew out of their childhood white lie phase. Our craft is the art of fabrication and yet, when done with care, a piece of well-wrought fiction can feel more real than the real world.

  Some of my oldest heartbreaks were caused by books. It’s strange that ink, paper, cardboard, and glue can provoke strong emotional reactions and yet it happens every day to almost everyone who picks one up. The lies told between “Once upon a time” and “The End” can hold surprising truths. Because where life falls short, fiction continues to push the boundaries in search of deep, universal truths.

  There’s a reason why we root for Stanley Yelnats to break the family curse, why we are disturbed by Hamlet’s madness, why we cry at the end of Where the Red Fern Grows. To us, those things really happened. Great writing uses people that never existed in situations that never occurred to tell us something about ourselves that dry reality can never match. We suspend our disbelief in reading fantastic literature not because we want to escape, but because we want to uncover something hidden in the everyday world. These stories — these utter falsehoods — can be paradoxically more honest than anything you will read in a newspaper.

  Writers are the best kinds of liars. We’re liars who seek out and tell the hardest truths.

  — 30 —

  Jonny Eberle is a writer, filmmaker and photographer in Tacoma, WA. Or is he? You can find half-truths and outright yarns on his Twitter feed or join his mailing list to receive blatant lies delivered straight to your inbox.