I started off in writing fiction assiduously avoiding anything that remotely resembled autobiography. To me using one’s own life felt like the practice of a writer who’d run out of good ideas. But when you’re young and bursting with inspiration (oh, and not lived all that much) you scoff at those would-be novelists who think their life is interesting enough to be documented for the general public.
Nowadays it’s never as simple.
Autofiction really is a thing in literary circles. Not that my past is so interesting that I should plunder those experiences as if they were gems to be marvelled at when represented in some shinier form. Fiction for me has been about, well, making stuff up. Although it is said good fiction always contains a kernel of truth.
My last novel, The Chosen, reads mostly like a memoir. But to believe it you’d have to accept some extraordinary events. That’s not to say it’s all made up, or even – to use that cliche – telling a lie to reveal a deeper truth. The art is in extrapolating from real experience.
I wonder if in this age when facts (empirical evidence notwithstanding) have never been so much in question – never so challenged by beliefs and opinions – that fiction has a useful role. Maybe some readers only trust what seems plausible rather than the ‘Experts’ view. Perhaps this is especially true of my genre of science fiction. And indeed two centuries ago most scientists never imagined their ‘facts’ could be overturned.
As well as providing an escape from the worst of reality, I think fiction has a crucial role to question accepted truths and conventional wisdom. Ideas of a good life, of beauty (superficially at least ), of normality have changed noticeably in the last two decades alone (although I accept that is a personal perspective – the ageing process). And maybe that questioning can be done more powerfully through a protagonist’s thoughts and experience. Even if it’s someone you may not like.
My published books:
World’s Beyond Time UK Worlds Beyond Time (US)
The Captured (US) The Captured (UK)
Download The Chosen for free while it’s still available.