The truth of fiction

We all know that fiction is made-up stories, don't we?  Stories are manufactured narratives, not a recounting of a series of events that actually happened in real life.  Except that in some sense, that isn't true.

Many writers, and I'm one of them, use their fiction to speak their truths.  We choose what to write about to get our beliefs and values, our concerns, out into the world.  My stories explore my concern about human overbreeding, and the overcrowding of our beautiful planet Earth.  My Panthera books were written in part to challenge the human assumption that we come first, that we have the right to exploit the natural world for our own selfish ends.

There are other kinds of truth in my stories too.  One truth is that I never create pathetic women characters. My women characters are all strong, usually independent, certainly never' 'sexy', whatever that means, and they know who they are and are comfortable with it. My truth is that I don't want to spend time with helpless women, and I won't write about them,

If we are writing fiction that comes from our hearts, if we're writing about things for which we have a passion, then our truth can't help but reveal itself in our stories.  It's the truth in the characters we create.  We give our heroes and heroines our thoughts and beliefs.  We have them pursuing careers we wished we'd had the courage to go for.  We have them adopting political and philosophical viewpoints we believe in and want to promote.

And it's only we we're writing our truth and revealing our beliefs that our writing really comes alive.  Our words embody our passion.  And as readers we intuitively know when a writer believes in what they're saying on the page. Something shines through from the narrative, some indefinable quality that gives the story an extra punch. These are the stories that stay with the reader long after they've finished reading them.

We sense the truth in that fiction even when its message is well hidden in the story.   That is the writing that has the power to change the world, the power to change people's minds.  It is writing where the truth can show us a better world, and, just for a moment, make us believe that we can reach that place.