Should Writers be Liars?
Where do I stand?

I believe in loose research. I got this idea from Lee Child, who says we should do our research, but not directly related to the project we’re working on. He thinks book research done during the writing process is too fresh and will be forced into the work, because the author doesn’t want the research to go to waste.

I agree 100%.

I cannot count how many books I’ve read where the author has fire-hosed a laundry list of facts and accurate descriptions, because she just returned from a month-long fact finding mission on-location.

I believe you should SOUND like you know what you’re talking about, but you don’t have to KNOW what you’re talking about.

Save for the professionals who become fiction writers in their chosen genres, most of us make this stuff up as we go. We’re dreamers. This is our gift. We see a story in our heads. We made the whole thing up. And we bang away at the keyboard until the story makes sense.

I believe dialogue must be as real as possible.

This is HARD to do. Many authors struggle with this, including me. Real dialogue includes a lot of behavior and less explanation than many authors give credit. There’s a tendency to put a lot of explanation in dialogue to make it sound credible. But this comes across as amateurish. Here’s a story I wrote about improving your dialogue:

I believe most fictional procedures and professions should NOT match reality.

Most police work is mundane. The legal process is long and tedious, little of which takes place in the courtroom, and most of it is spent talking to clients, reading, and paperwork. Medicine is not sexy — we use saws and hammers. Surgeons play Van Halen and tell dirty jokes in the OR while we’re out-cold.

The reader wants an escape from the mundane.

We want to go on a journey. Sure, we want to learn, but we don’t read fiction to learn more about the legal system, or brain surgery. We read fiction to learn more about OURSELVES. We put ourselves in the characters’ shoes. If the writing is done well we take the journey with them. The type of grip on the pistol, or the lack of gloves on the detective rarely means a tin-shit.

Some will argue this is sloppy craftsmanship.

They aren’t wrong — but are they right? While one person has his t-shirt in a knot, because I used the wrong color paint on a squad car, 5,000 other people saw the story as an enjoyable journey.
['August Birch']
['Writing Life', 'Fiction', 'Writing', 'Writing Tips', 'Creativity']