The Truth Behind the Lie

“There is no doubt, fiction makes a better job of the truth.” – Doris Lessing

“But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.” – Ken Kesey

 

Steven Spielberg tells a story about the making of Jaws, when he wanted a fake severed arm made for a scene in which Amity Chief of Police finds a chewed up shark victim on the beach. The special effects team delivered a fake arm for him a few days later.

“This is terrible!” Spielberg said. “The arm looks plastic, it looks totally fake!”

“But wait!” the special effects team said. “This is how the skin would look if the arm had been in the sea for twelve hours or more. It’s totally authentic.”

Spielberg thought about this for a moment. “You know what, I’m not making this film for the one guy who might be in the audience who’s a specialist on the effects of seawater on severed limbs. It looks plastic to me, we’re not using it.”

For the scene that finally made it into the movie, Spielberg convinced one of his crew to lie in the sand, with just her arm in shot, whilst sand crabs scuttled all over it.

Stories, whether they be stories we watch, read or listen to, are lies.

But the most convincing stories appear to be true. Or at least work hard enough that we are willing to suspend our disbelief for the duration of the story, and believe in them.

This is called verisimilitude. The appearance of truth, or realism, within a narrative.

Spielberg was not interested in the real truth, but the appearance of truth within his construct of lies, his story, his narrative.

But fiction can also reveal truth by framing that truth within the confines of a story.

The stories that we read, and watch, and listen to, the stories that we tell each other, are a way of constructing our lives, making order out of the chaos that surrounds us.

And sometimes those stories can tell us a certain truth. Usually about ourselves.

A theme I discovered surfacing repeatedly in my stories over the years was that of the absent father. Recently I have come to discover certain things about my own father that made me realise I never actually knew him.

Although I hadn’t realised it, I had been expressing that emotional truth in my own stories for many years.

First of all there is the Baptist Minister looking for his missing teenage daughter in my second attempt at writing a novel. Over the course of the story he comes to realise how little he knew his daughter, and reflects on his relationship with his own father, and their lack of attachment.

Then there is Jim Kerrigan, in Caxton Tempest at the End of the World. Jim is a Victorian orphan, whose parents are dead. He is rescued from his abusive captor, Marchek Mulready, by Tempest, who then becomes a father of sorts, but he also proves to be aloof and absent.

Dallas Hogan has an abusive father in Population:DEAD!, and finishes the story intent on exacting a terrible revenge for all the years of cruelty inflicted upon her.

Abigail Rose tragically loses her father in a fight, because in part, he has been unable to form a proper relationship with his daughter, in my pirate tale, The Devil and Edward Teach.

But the most pertinent example of all comes in my short story, Dad. By now in my early forties, I still had painful memories and emotions left over from certain childhood experiences. I also had this idea for a story in the back of my mind, about a man who is visited by the ghost of his father. The ghost wants to heal his relationship with his son, say sorry for his part in their troubled relationship..

I meshed my memories with this idea, weaving the truth of my relationship with my own father into a fictional tale, involving fictional characters.

The experience proved to be a cathartic one for me, and has resonated with many readers over the years.

Within the lies of the story lay an emotional truth, one that many people can identify with.

Dad is included in my digital short story collection, Stories of the Night, which I am currently giving away as a thank you for signing up to my newsletter.

The other stories included in this collection are-

Mrs De Runtzen’s Jewels, a Victorian ghost story.

Little Monsters, a halloween horror story.

The Nazi Superweapon, a second world war horror story.

“Drive Fast,” She Said, a coming of age tale involving a fast car and a reckless dare.

Whatever sort of story you are after, I’m pretty sure there’s something in this collection for you.

Except chic lit. I don’t do chic lit.