People, animals, and, yes, even plants, provide suitable fodder.
“Plants?” you ask.
Why, sure! You think that tree branch you keep reminding yourself to dodge…and do, doesn’t purposely move to descend just the right amount to thwack you on the noggin even though you know you ducked low enough? You think that rambling rose branch you swore you tied up yesterday didn’t purposely grow another scion overnight, just as long, so it could catch you, once again, with its thorns? How about that thistle in the grass you dug out with the weed puller just last week, getting its entire tap root. So now your lawn is safe for walking barefoot, right? Wrong. You step, and — OW! — there it is…in the exact same spot! What the–?!
People, families, and their various foibles are, of course, much more fertile resources to mine for interesting and even hardly believable fiction fodder. That’s why the story writer has to lie, telling a more believable story than the reality presents.
Take someone we’ll call “Sonya” and her daughter. They get away with causing someone’s death, not once, but over five times in just under ten years, and they have yet to be caught. Yet everyone who knows them knows “they did it”…except the cops.
How?
Sheer audacity, on one hand, and sheer stupidity upon another…but let’s not get too deeply into the hows and whys because I might want to write the story someday. Suffice it to say, I’m going to have to adjust the “facts, Ma’am” because the truth is just too unbelievable. I’ll have to hedge and mute and even amputate some of the most salient reasons why they keep “getting away with murder.” To do it truthfully would just be too unbelievable and suspect. People would guffaw and snicker, “Not possible!” So, if I write it, I’ll modify — lie — to make it more rationally feasible. The reality, though, is, don’t get on these ladies bad side, not if you live around here…and even if you don’t…cuz they’re like a dog chewing a bone when it comes to avenging a perceived “wrong” against them. And they never forget. One of their victims was someone who slighted the mom way back in elementary school, some forty-five years previous. How’s that for carrying a grudge?
Animals are some of my favorites, though. Like the goldfish who swat their tails at their owner’s husband every time the poor guy walks past the fish tank. Why? ”Cause Jerry never feeds the fish, never cleans the tank, and never turns the light on,” says the owner. ”If I go on a trip, the fish fend for themselves the whole time, even though Jerry’s in and out all day. After I took my first two week trip, they started doing this. I think they know he’s not their friend, so they splash him anytime he comes near. And it works, too. He rarely goes past the fish tank, anymore. When he does, he makes a really wide berth.” She chuckles. ”Doesn’t matter, though. They get him, anyway. They’ve got a great aim.” Noticeably, they don’t do this to strangers. Only Jerry. :D
Cows are great for similar tactics. If they want to get back at you, they do it with a well-placed foot grinding yours into the ground underneath or the swat of a super-saturated tail-full of very rank and sludgy manure.
Humorous, sad, terrifying, or poignant, writing fiction becomes less that of invention and more of an exercise in skillfully adjusting truth so it’s palatable as fiction — writing lies from truth.
Recently:
- Writing Pedagogues
- They Work Very Hard
- Treading the Dangers of Fiction
- Infighting About Grammar & Punctuation
- Scary Writers
- New Novel, Chapter Two
- To the Book Store
- New Novel Amid Chaos
- Raw Gore, Explicit Cruelty, Debased Sex in Novels
- Back from Summer Hiatus
