Professional liars and truthmongers

ABSTRACT

Writers of fiction tell lies all the time. Yet somehow in the middle of all of these made-up scenarios some truths emerge. Fiction, with its habits and conventions that lead to shared understanding, is becoming a narrative style rather than remaining a genre and makes possible a different type of biography, a different way of describing history, and even a way of establishing what happened within the gaps that lie between the verifiable facts. This paper considers the process that takes place in creating this type of narrative, which tools are available for the writer and how these are used. This will be illustrated with excerpts from my own recently completed fictional biography. Some points from the current discussion of this type of practice will be explored and some new content will be introduced into that debate.

KEYWORDS:

• Biography
• creative non-fiction
• historical fiction
• narrative

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Gill James lectures in English and Creative Writing at the University of Salford. She writes novels for children and young adults and short stories and flash fiction for adults.

She is currently involved in writing a cycle of books set in Nazi Germany. They are biographical but may look like fiction.

Notes

1 Accessed June 19, 2015. http://www.yadvashem.org/