Delphinium Books

Offering readers the best in quality literature

  • Home
  • About
  • Our Books
  • Blog
  • Submissions
  • Contact
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram

Difference Between Fiction and Non-Fiction Narratives

July 24, 2018

Before She Sleeps - Difference Between Fiction and Non-Fiction Narratives

At Delphinium, we often ponder the difference between fiction and non-fiction narrative, and it seems more and more that these two literary distinctions are being blurred. Even though the memoir genre is still thriving, it’s now generally understood that memoirs are embellished, truth laced with invention; and yet it’s also true that many memoirs could not be successfully published as novels. With a memoir, it’s the very idea—or in some cases, the illusion—of confession that makes a book saleable. The premise is that a memoir will attract a reader who can believe they have gone through an experience similar to the one they read about. For this reason, memoirists—and their publishers—may be reluctant to divulge whatever is actually invented.

Could this confusion about fact and fiction, a confusion that arguably is plaguing America on the political and social front, be linked to the advent of reality television? Reality television, after all, is presented as real people in real situations; and yet, if you speak to anyone involved in the production of reality television, they’ll tell you that to be made compelling, to be believed, reality television needs to be scripted. This sounds like fiction to me.

So what is believable?

This is a question that plagues writers–and their editors—and literature is always testing the waters. Books written in a realistic vein deal with this larger question rather easily: their authors, through the prism of their talent, are reflecting the world as they see it. Books written about the distant past, set in a time long before their author is born, have a different challenge of constructing a believable world based on research. But perhaps the most challenging subject matter is the future, the world that has yet to come, and there are certain brave souls who dare to imagine what life might be like then.

Before She Sleeps – A Novel About A Fictional Future Society

In August, we bring out Before She Sleeps, by Bina Shah, a novel that imagines a future society where women, forced to take multiple husbands, go underground.

We are publishing the book first and foremost because we love its narrative arc; its social and political messages are embedded in the story. While the book is clearly fiction, one can’t help wondering if this imagined situation, might actually happen at some point in the future. If so, then a feverishly invented novel will become reality.

Other posts you may enjoy:

Where Did The Women Go? This post explains some of the inspiration for the novel Before She Sleeps.
How I came to write a Dystopian novel about Life in South Asia 
Both posts above by Bina Shah.
Is Historical Fiction a form of Non-Fiction?

Filed Under: General

Recent Posts

  • Started as a Text: The Writing Process by Bill Gaythwaite September 28, 2023
  • The Fact and the Truth of THE LIGHT OF SEVEN DAYS by River Adams August 8, 2023
  • DREAMING UP AS FIGS IN AUTUMN by Ben Bastomski June 7, 2023
  • ON WRITING THE MONSOON WAR by Bina Shah May 2, 2023
  • On the Line Between Memory and Invention Lies the Story by Kimberly Olson Fakih December 11, 2022
  • Six Thoughts on Historical Fiction by Don Zancanella, author of A Storm in the Stars August 8, 2022

Categories

  • Delphinium Authors
  • General
  • New Books
  • News

Tags

1954 acceptance speech artists Austria autobiographical Books Booz Allen Hamilton bottoming out celebrity demotic Dostoyevsky dysfunctional Edward Snowden fame fiction fiction-writing Fitgerald Fuhrer George Elliot Germany Hemingway Historical Fiction holocaust imagination James Frey Jewish Karen Silkwood literature Memoir memoirist Middlemarch Nabokov Nazi Nazis Nobel Prize novelist novelists NSA Reading redemption Sobibor style World War II writers writing

Archives

  • September 2023
  • August 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • December 2022
  • August 2022
  • April 2022
  • October 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2019
  • April 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • August 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • October 2013

© 2023 · Delphinium Books. All rights reserved.