You tell me: are stories lies?

Got into a discussion with Tita last night over WhatsApp, about equating storytelling with telling lies. I don't see it as offensive, but Tita does. She sees it as a personal affront, in fact.

While I can give definitions like I sometimes do, why not I approach this the way I know best: illustrating using words.

 

The room is small but the mirror covering one whole wall gives it an illusion of added space. The open windows on the opposite wall adds to that illusion. Everything is white, from the walls to the ceiling and floor, to the windowsills, to the curtains gently billowing with the morning breeze, and to the ceiling fan revolving with a lazy grace.

Because of this pristine whiteness, the apple in the middle of the room stands out even though its red skin is dull. Its surface is smooth and gleams in the light coming in from the window. You pick it up and you think about the sweet juice that escapes your lips as you take a big bite. You imagine how good the flesh tastes in your mouth. Not too sweet, not too sour. Just right.

Something wiggles between your finger. Soon more wigglings tickle your palm, your fingers, and the back of your hands. You drop the apple and it lands with a thud. It cracks, and out pour countless maggots, white as the walls, white as the curtains, white as the ceiling fan.

They wiggle toward you, climbing up your feet, your calves, your thighs. The maggots keep coming.

 

I'm sorry if I have caused any discomfort. Did you visualize the scene I described? Did you see the white room, the billowing curtains, the revolving fan? Did the image fill you with a sense of calm? Did you see the apple on the floor? Did you see the maggots, and how white no longer gives you the same sense of calm, but of oppression and revulsion?

Yes. I am arrogant enough to hope that at least some of you experienced what I hope you did. But that's not the point. The room I described? Doesn't exist. Well it could exist somewhere, but that's not the point either.

Point is, I described a scene out of my imagination, a scene that to me doesn't exist in real life. A scene that is made up. When we were little, our parents would scold us for making up stories, for telling lies.

When we say 'fiction' or 'novel', we know right from the start that what we will read is make-believe, even when it's a contemporary general fiction. When we watch movies like "Wanted" and "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" and "Ever After", we know that the movies we watch didn't really happen. If the pills in "Limitless" really do exist, the world would have been a different place.

For the duration of reading stories and watching movies, as well as afterward, we take these lies as truths. We accept the possibility of the events unfolding as real. This is called suspension of belief. Our mind prepares itself to be lied to. If executed correctly, the readers and the audience will forget that what's happening isn't real. But when the presentation is blundered, you'll get movies like "Sharktopus" and books like "The Lost Symbol". You're consciously aware that you're being lied to, that you're being preached. Your suspension of belief is betrayed.

Back to my original point. I have lied, I have been lied to. Sometimes I willingly accept a lie because I know the intention behind it is good: to stop me from worrying, to make me feel better, to ease the situation. The lie is told not to harm, but to protect. Then there are lies told to protect the person telling it, lies to cover the wrongs, lies told with ill intent.

To simplify matters, lie is just a word. Its context is the factor that makes a world of difference. This is why I don't mind when people say that storytelling is a lie that tells truths. Even the first storytellers embellished to make their tales more dramatic, to have that oomph. People keep asking me if my stories (especially the non-SF ones) are based on true events, or that I'm the one pining over a lost love. And I have to keep telling them, "No, they're just stories."

But my stories are based on certain emotions, memories or longings that I felt before and while writing them. Not everyone likes my works, and I don't expect every single person to like what I write. But to have even one person to shed a tear for my characters, to feel hope for a better tomorrow, to laugh at quirky moments, to sigh over a loving couple's exchanges, I've successfully conveyed the emotions I felt while writing.

I seldom write for others; I write for myself. I write to remind myself of the good times, to show myself how things could have happened differently, to show myself the possibilities that lie ahead. I lie to myself, I suspend belief, so that for just a moment, for that moment alone, I feel good about who I am, what I am.

You guys are just along for the ride.

So you tell me. Is it okay to say storytelling is the same as lying? Or do you get offended? Do you think it's an insult?

Comments

[Breanna]

For my grandfather "telling stories" is a synonym for "telling lies". The difference, I think, comes in what you were talking about with "The Lost Symbol". The reason that book grates is because there are ways writers can tell the truth with their fiction and ways they can lie. And usually the reader can smell a lie a mile away--that's why people get angry when characters behave in ways that don't make sense.

So you write to evoke an emotion. (Say, disgust. Ewww, maggotty apples.) But even if the scene evoking the emotion is made up, the emotion is real, and the reasons we feel it are real. It's a truth, in other words, to experience heartache because someone is losing their love. It's a truth to search for redemption (even if you redemption takes you some weird sci-fi path). It's a truth to struggle with temptation even when you know better. It's not true for a person to have no flaws and make no mistakes.

So yeah. I think for a writer telling a made-up story can be telling the truth. At least, that's what I try to do.

[John Ling]

Fiction is real life with all the boring bits taken out.

[John Ling]

Or, to put it another way, non-fiction is the search for fact. Fiction is the search for truth.

[Fadzlishah Johanabas]

I like how you put it. I don't really think about fiction as lying, because, to be honest, lying is not a good way to make money. And I need all the little blessings I can get.

[John Ling]

To be honest, there's more lying in 'non-fiction' than there is in fiction.

Case in point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_cups_of_tea

[double glazed sash windows]

Storytelling isn't exactly a lie or truth. It's just a tool for communication. It depends on the intentions of the storyteller if it's true or not.