Blog #5:Memoirs and non-fiction

I believe that a book must be about 95% true in order for it to be considered non-fiction because if most of the book is lies then people will misinterpret the story line and always believe what’s in the book. There are certain details that can be changed such as a character’s name, maybe where they lived or just little facts like that. When an author is changing the whole storyline in which the ending of the story is different than the real thing, there is a big issue here of whether the book is non-fiction or fiction. I know people tweak their stories to make them more interesting to their audience but drastically changing the plot doesn’t make the story non-fiction.

There should be a new genre in which authors have a creative story that they experienced in their lifetime and if they want to write about it and make a few changes, sure, they can do that but it’s not considered fiction or non-fiction anymore. A new Genre will change the perspective of readers. I, as a reader, would want to know whether the whole book was true or not because I hate being led on. When I found out A Million Little Pieces wasn’t 100% true, my heart broke. I hated the thought that someone lied to me. Now if I was told before that half the book was true I would be fine with that because I would think about “How did this actually happen to this man?” and worry about how he dealt with this situation. I would be able to set the book down and say it was a great book but I know some of the things written were made up. With a new genre created for these half-truths, I believe readers will be more understanding to these books and critics won’t be fighting over “when something is considered non-fiction?” they’re just wasting energy on the subject.

I do agree with David Shields that you don’t have to make everything true within your story. People freak out about this too much. They can’t just label a book fiction or non-fiction because people are going to change things. There are 300 pages full of mostly fiction and there may be a fact in there but why can’t the book be non-fiction, it has facts right? I think putting books into genres is only complicating the whole book world. There are so many books between two or three genre that it’s unfair to the book to place it in one. I know it’s easier to categorize a book so they can be put on certain shelves in a book store or library but not every book is just fiction or just non-fiction. It would be better to classify them by author or maybe specifics things happening with in the story.