"It Reads Like Nonfiction."
Why is this a compliment for fiction writing?
A common phrase about certain works of contemporary fiction is that they “read like nonfiction.” It’s meant as a compliment. If your work reads like nonfiction, that means your reader is not getting bogged down by the artifice that can sometimes accompany fiction writing. When a novel reads like nonfiction, the reader is happily deep in the experience that they are reading about a real person, that the world of the novel feels real, that they aren’t stumbling over anything that might impede this illusion, which is spun carefully by the writer. A work reading like nonfiction speaks directly to the common appeal of autofiction. I thought you were writing about your life. I was never pulled out once.
I love nonfiction, so much so that I just released my first book of nonfiction, a memoir called My Iliad Odyssey. Check out the blurb and buy the book. You’ll get a cool book in your mailbox in a week. When’s the last time you looked forward to something coming to your mailbox?
Despite my love of nonfiction, I’d suggest that we pay a heavy price for wishing our fiction to read like nonfiction. That price is the ability of fiction to take us closer to the ineffable. When a writer’s goal is merely to ensure that the reader continues to feel that the world the writer is creating is like real life, the writer often sacrifices the ability for their work to transcend real life, to become more important than real life in a way people like me still go to fiction to experience. Few if any who read Moby-Dick or The Bluest Eye or A Red Badge of Courage are overly concerned with the question, “Did this really happen?” In the most important way, it does.
As a reader and writer of memoir, I understand and respect that the form works with the author's memory as the primary source, that the emotional truths they render are the point of the story while the details—who said or did what where—are simply bones on which to hang the muscles and flesh of the author's interior plight. That’s the name of the game in memoir—to touch people through the retelling of some part of your story. The nonfiction aspect of a memoir is really just window dressing for me, not something upon which to get stuck. If the memory is composed with a bit of fiction, that’s fine with me, so long as the author isn’t overtly lying.
The chief issue every writer in the 2020s has to deal with is, how do I keep my reader interested enough in my work to finish it? We live in a world with a million distractions, and most of them—at least on their surfaces—seem more compelling than reading books.
One of the few author tools that still cuts through well enough to ensure some attention is to tell people about your real life. “This happened to me” still gets our attention. “Here, look at my life,” especially the dirty side, offers a voyeuristic thrill. “Let me tell you about my experiences with this famous person” perks up our senses. These are classic techniques to pique interest. The addiction memoir all but requires the writer tell about themselves at their lowest points. It's also hard for me to imagine an abuse memoir without the author offering flinch-worthy details of the abuse. I seem to have a thing for the real side of writers’ financial lives. I once read an article by a favorite writer Steve Almond, and all I remembered about the article a week later was that he mentioned that he'd made $90k as a writer the previous year. Really? Is that, on some level, what I care most about? I wouldn't have thought so, but if that’s all I remember, that's pretty damning evidence.
In 2025, when just about every other form of art and entertainment seems on the surface more compelling to most people, writers can’t afford to ignore the appeal of this aspect of their material. Many writers get this instinctually, and they lean heavily on the sense that they're telling you about their inner lives, their money, their shame, their abuses both given and received. Give many of us any of these aspects in your pages, and we’re automatically interested.
The only problems come when the memoirist starts lying without letting the reader in on it. The most famous example is the memoir A Million Little Pieces, whose author James Frey in 2001 went from reaping the rewards of being an Oprah book club pick to becoming the focus of her wrath when it was discovered he fictionalized aspects of his book. This was a big event in the reading and writing world. Oprah expressed her fury with Frey right there on TV in front of us, and Frey and his publisher did their best to defend his book.
Despite sympathizing with Frey, I thought this fictionalization did not shine well upon the author or my ability to appreciate his work. I avoided A Million Little Pieces for years, and I eventually picked up the audiobook version to see what all the fuss was about. I thought the book was a compellingly written addiction memoir that offered an alternative to typical AA-style recovery paths. There’s a rumor that the book was originally written as a novel, but Frey’s agent couldn’t sell it as such, so he called it a memoir. It seems to me, memoirists get away with this type of embellishment all the time. The rule, as I've surmised, is don't lie about anything for which you might get caught.
Some of the most accomplished writers I know claim that they don't care if a memoirist knowingly fictionalizes. At a conference once, a panelist went so far as to say that she doesn't even look to see whether the book-length narrative she's reading is fiction or memoir. Why would it matter? she implied.
I think I understand why many folks feel this way. Writers who come from the literary world respect attempts to get emotional truths onto the page, and therefore they don't fuss much over whether a piece is fiction or nonfiction. It's a goal I generally associate with poetry. When I read “The Good-Morrow” by John Donne, I'm not asking myself, “Is this true? Did Donne write this love poem to some woman? Who was she?” I’m struck by the ability of the author to use language to pull me out of more pedestrian concerns such as whether the work is fiction or nonfiction and toward more transcendent aspects of being human: being in love, communicating both beautifully and honestly. In short, the poem speaks to my better angels on important subjects. Getting there is what’s special to me about the reading process.
It's important to note that I most definitely am not the type of reader who chases down sources to make sure a writer's work of nonfiction is indeed nonfiction. Between my day job and other interests, I'm stuck behind a computer more than I care to be. If you lie to me in your memoir, it's likely I'm never going to find out. Sometimes these things find me, but most of the time I don't care.
What I do care about is the level of trust I offer to a writer with whom I’m engaged. If you don't care that what you say in a piece of nonfiction is nonfiction, then what does that say about the other truths offered in your work? Maybe nothing, but the lie at the outset opens the possibility for me to wonder, and the time spent wondering is time I’m not giving myself fully to your work.
I can be reeled in with the nonfictional aspects of a writer’s work, but when it comes down to it, I want their work to transcend those concerns. Writer Karen Karbo once said to me, “If you reader is doing math in their head while reading your book, you’re in trouble.” I’d add that you’re also in trouble if your reader is worried about whether what you say in a nonfiction work is true or not. How can I trust you to tell the truth about higher things if you’re lying about everything else?
If you want the unvarnished truth about a novelist who pounded his head against the door of traditional publishing for decades only to be reminded that the rewards of a life in literature had little to do with publishing your work, then you’d like My Iliad Odyssey. Check out the blurb and buy the book.