Friday, February 11, 2011

Real or not real?

In Creative Writing class, we always do a warm-up at the beginning. We've also just started on the fiction section of our class. Today, (or...I guess it's yesterday now) our prompt was to write an argument between a husband and wife in a grocery store.
One student commented jokingly, "I thought this was supposed to be fiction."

When she said that, I thought, shouldn't fiction be real, though? Even if it's in a completely different world, with flying matresses as the main characters, shouldn't fiction feel real? The best book I've ever read is Mockingjay. Completely fictional world, characters, situation, etc. But still, it felt so real to me. More real than certain books that actually happen in this time and place (if you've been living under a rock in the literary world, The Hunger Games trilogy takes place in a dystopian society).

How? Why?

I think it comes down to the emotion it evokes, and the struggles, and the message. Fiction should feel real, even if it could never happen.
(and title of the post goes to one of the best lines in Mockingjay)

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