truth is stranger than fiction argumentative essay

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Tracing Quotations

Truth Is Stranger than Fiction, But It Is Because Fiction Is Obliged to Stick to Possibilities; Truth Isn’t

Mark Twain? Lord Byron? G. K. Chesterton? Edward Bellamy? Humphrey Bogart? Leo Rosten? Tom Clancy?

1) Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. 2) It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction must be credible. 3) Truth is stranger than fiction. It has to be! Fiction has to be possible and truth doesn’t! 4) The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.

Would you please explore this topic and determine what Twain actually said? Some versions have been credited to humorist Leo Rosten and top-selling author Tom Clancy.

Quote Investigator: In 1897 Mark Twain released a travel book titled “Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World”, and the fifteenth chapter presented the following epigraph. Boldface has been added to excerpts: [1] 1897, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens), (Chapter 15 Epigraph), Quote Page 156, American Publishing Company, Hartford, Connecticut; Also Doubleday … Continue reading

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.

Pudd’nhead Wilson was the name of a fictional character in a novel Twain published a few years before the travel book. Thus, Twain was the actual crafter of the remark given above. Over the years many variant phrasings have evolved.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

In 1823 Lord Byron published several cantos of his epic satirical poem “Don Juan”. The one-hundredth stanza of canto 14 included two lines indicating that momentous events sometimes capriciously hinged on other seemingly unimportant occurrences:

You’ll never guess I’ll bet you millions, milliards— It all sprung from a harmless game at billiards.

The next stanza expressed a thought about the strangeness of truth that has now become idiomatic: [2] 1823, Don Juan: Cantos XIII, XIII, and XIV, Author: George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron), Canto 14, Stanza 101, Quote Page 165, Printed for John Hunt, London. (Google Books Full View) link

‘Tis strange—but true; for truth is always strange, Stranger than fiction: if it could be told, How much would novels gain by the exchange! How differently the world would men behold!

In 1888 Edward Bellamy published the popular utopian novel “Looking Backward: 2000–1887” which contained a germane quotation. The main character Julian West, an insomniac, built a special chamber to block noises and hired a mesmerist to facilitate a deep sleep. A conflagration in 1887 caused West’s contemporaries to believe he had perished while his body remained hidden and preserved for more than a century. In 2000 West’s body was rediscovered and revived. He was confused and skeptical about his new situation, so he asked his discoverer for an explanation: [3] 1888, Looking Backward: 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy, Chapter 3, Quote Page 45 and 46, Ticknor and Company, Boston, Massachusetts. (HathiTrust Full View) link

“Perhaps,” I said, “you will go on and favor me with some particulars as to the circumstances under which you discovered this chamber of which you speak, and its contents. I enjoy good fiction.” “In this case,” was the grave reply, “no fiction could be so strange as the truth.”

The above quotation was applied to one particular situation; hence, it did not quite fit the proverbial form.

In 1895 a newspaper in Delphos, Ohio printed a humorous precursor as an anonymous filler item: [4] 1895 August 9, The Delphos Daily Herald, (Fill item), Quote Page 2, Column 6, Delphos, Ohio. (Newspapers_com)

Truth is stranger than fiction because we don’t meet it as often.

In 1897 Mark Twain included an adage comparing truth and fiction in “Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World” as mentioned previously:

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

In 1904 “Current Literature: A Magazine of Contemporary Thought” reprinted the words of Twain in an altered form. The two words “possibilities” and “isn’t” were replaced by “probability” and “ain’t”. In addition, the phrasing was changed: [5] 1904 December, Current Literature: A Magazine of Contemporary Thought, Volume 37, Number 6, The Original of Lady Kitty? Start Page 518, Quote Page 521, Column 1, The Current Literature Publishing … Continue reading

It was Mark Twain who once remarked sagely, in the person of Pudd’nhead Wilson, that “truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction is obliged to stick to probability, and truth ain’t.”

In 1905 the noteworthy essayist and detective writer G. K. Chesterton presented a thematically related statement: [6] 1905, The Club of Queer Trades by Gilbert K. Chesterton, The Singular Speculation of the House-Agent, Start Page 129, Quote Page 135 and 136, Harper & Brothers, New York. (Google Books Full View) … Continue reading

“Do you believe that truth is stranger than fiction?” “Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction,” said Basil, placidly. “For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.”

In 1913 “The Magazine Maker: An Informative Journal for Writers and Editors” printed an article about submitting stories to magazines, and shared the opinion that many such tales were of low quality. The author presented a quotation from John Thompson who was the editor of “Pearson’s Magazine”, and Thompson employed another variant of Twain’s statement: [7] 1913 January, The Magazine Maker: An Informative Journal for Writers and Editors, Volume 3, Number 6, The Newspaper Story by Russell E. Smith, Start Page 11, Quote Page 13, The Hannis Jordan Company, … Continue reading

“There is an astonishing lack of ‘naturalness’ in these stories that come to us through the mails. If the chaps who write these stories would get a little more naturalness into their yarns there would be more published. Mark Twain said ‘Truth is stranger than fiction. It has to be! Fiction has to be possible and truth doesn’t!'”

In 1914 “Pearson’s Magazine” printed an advertisement that praised forthcoming stories. Twain’s remark was rephrased yet again: [8] 1914 July, Pearson’s Magazine, Volume 32, Number 1, (Advertisement for stories appearing in a future issue of Pearson’s Magazine), Quote Page 112, The Pearson Publishing Company, New … Continue reading

“Truth,” said Mark Twain, “is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be possible and truth doesn’t.”

In 1922 “McClure’s Magazine” printed a short story that uncertainly echoed the absurdist variant given several years earlier in “Pearson’s Magazine”: [9] 1922 May, McClure’s Magazine, Volume 54, Number 3, Aaron Westcott’s Funeral By Viola Roseboro’, Start Page 37, Quote Page 39, Column 2, The McClure Publishing Company, New York. … Continue reading

But what was it Mark Twain said, ‘Truth’s stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be possible and truth doesn’t’?

The 1954 film “The Barefoot Contessa” included a thematically matching line spoken by the star Humphrey Bogart as recorded in “The Movie Quote Book”. The screenplay was by Joseph L. Mankiewicz: [10] 1980, The Movie Quote Book, Compiled by Harry Haun, Topic: Screenplays, Quote Page 293 Lippincott & Crowell, New York. (Verified on paper)

“Kirk was wrong when he said I didn’t know where movie scripts left off and life began. A script has to make sense, and life doesn’t.”

In 1975 the humorist Leo Rosten published an article in “The Saturday Review” that included an instance of the adage. Rosten used an asterisk footnote to assign credit to Mark Twain: [11] 1975 January 25, The Saturday Review, Diversions: This Enchanted World by Leo Rosten, Start Page 8, Quote Page 8, Column 1, Saturday Review Associates, New York. (Unz)

“Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction?” asked the soundest psychologist the United States has produced.* “Fiction, after all, has to make sense.” Reality, of course, does not. If you doubt this, settle down as I give you a sample of some recent carryings-on of the human species. *Mark Twain.

The popular 1977 compilation “Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time” by Laurence J. Peter contained a version of the saying. Interestingly, the instance given by Peter matched the instance given by Rosten, and both were ascribed to Twain: [12] 1977, “Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time” by Laurence J. Peter, Section: Truth, Quote Page 473, William Morrow and Company, New York. (Verified on paper)

Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. —Mark Twain

In 1978 Leo Rosten published “Passions & Prejudices: Or, Some of My Best Friends Are People”, and he expressed another thematically matching notion which he ascribed to Twain: [13] 1978, Passions & Prejudices: Or, Some of My Best Friends Are People by Leo Rosten, Chapter 4: The Glories of the Press, Quote Page 24, Published by McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York. (Verified … Continue reading

For novelty, lunacy and surprise, fiction cannot begin to compete with fact. Mark Twain knew why: Fiction has to make sense . . . and life doesn’t.

In 1997 “Reader’s Digest Quotable Quotes” ascribed the following saying to Tom Clancy who was a bestselling author of military thrillers: [14] 1997, Reader’s Digest Quotable Quotes: Wit and Wisdom for All Occasions, Quote Page 140, Published by Reader’s Digest Association, Pleasantville, New York. (Verified on paper)

The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense. —TOM CLANCY

In 2004 an instance appeared as a puzzle solution in the long-running syndicated newspaper feature called “Celebrity Cipher”. Cryptograms for this widely-distributed column were based on “quotations by famous people past and present”: [15] 2004 November 10, Santa Cruz Sentinel, Celebrity Cipher by Luis Campos, (Previous Solution), Quote Page B7, Column 5, Santa Cruz, California. (Newspapers_com)

“Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense.” — Leo Rosten

In 2012 the energetic quotation collector Robert Byrne published “The 2,548 Wittiest Things Anybody Ever Said”, and he included an anonymous instance of the saying: [16] 2012, The 2,548 Wittiest Things Anybody Ever Said by Robert Byrne, Quote Number 855, Touchstone: A Division of Simon & Schuster, New York. (Verified on paper)

The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense. —Unknown

In conclusion, there is a large family of sayings which contrast “truth/reality” and “fiction”. These adages assert that fiction must accord with possibilities or probabilities. Alternatively, they state that fiction must make sense or be credible. QI believes that this family of expressions evolved from Mark Twain’s remark published in 1897. Many different variants have been assigned to Twain; however, current evidence only supports the ascription of 1897 statement.

Image Notes: Photo of faucet sculpture fountain from Hans on Pixabay. Portrait of Mark Twain from Appleton’s Journal of July 4, 1874 via Wikimedia Commons. Image showing part of the cover of the 1897 edition of “Following the Equator” by Mark Twain.

(Great thanks to Hope Dellon, Secretoriginz, and Ed Darrell who asked about this family of sayings. Dellon knew the correct Twain quotation. Their inquiries led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. Additional thanks to Brandon Miller who pointed to the quotation in Bellamy’s 1888 work.)

Update History: On February 6, 2019 the 1888 Bellamy citation was added.

The meaning and origin of the expression: Truth is stranger than fiction

Truth is stranger than fiction

What's the meaning of the phrase 'truth is stranger than fiction'.

Literal meaning.

What's the origin of the phrase 'Truth is stranger than fiction'?

This proverbial saying is attributed to, and almost certainly coined by, Lord Byron, in the satirical poem Don Juan , 1823:

' Tis strange - but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction; if it could be told, How much would novels gain by the exchange! How differently the world would men behold! How oft would vice and virtue places change! The new world would be nothing to the old, If some Columbus of the moral seas Would show mankind their souls' antipodes.

See also: the List of Proverbs .

By Gary Martin

Gary Martin is a writer and researcher on the origins of phrases and the creator of the Phrase Finder website. Over the past 26 years more than 700 million of his pages have been downloaded by readers. He is one of the most popular and trusted sources of information on phrases and idioms.

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Why Reality Is Stranger Than Fiction

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Pavlo Shopin

Critics and philosophers often argue that art estranges reality, thereby drawing attention to the way we organize our lives and perceive things. Reality, however, frequently outsmarts fiction because the human imagination struggles to come to terms with its weirdness. Living a conscious life and understanding its major issues is much harder than writing or reading literature. Reality is difficult to imagine: in its shadow we feel the scorching cold of the unknown. Meanwhile, fiction entertains us and helps us escape the inconceivable complexities of modern life. Stories and images allow existentially displaced and intellectually confused modern humans to find a comfortable home and see order in the indifferent chaos. Art has the unfortunate disadvantage of being illusory, untethered to reality. Fiction cannot solve the key dilemmas of life, unless we are ready to deceive ourselves into acting out its masterful fabrications, which may take the form, for example, of religion or political ideology. Some artists think they can provoke and disrupt our perception and cognition, but their efforts fail to illuminate the world, only scratching the surface of what is truly extraordinary about the human condition. To make sense of life, we will be better served by doing science—or, at least, by accepting that rather than estrange it, art makes the incomprehensible universe more hospitable to the feeble human mind. Fiction is familiar and soothing, a respite from the harsh prose of life, and we should not mistake it for a reliable source of true knowledge and revelatory experience. After all, reality is stranger than fiction.

In his 1917 article “Art as Device,” Viktor Shklovsky argues that writers estrange language in order to disrupt the automaticity of life and help people grasp reality. Since routine activities retreat into the subconscious, ordinary speech cannot be fully heard . We no longer pay attention to the intricacies of verbal communication because it has become a habit and thus flies beneath the radar of critical thought. This automaticity is generally characteristic of human cognition. According to Shklovsky, “this is how life becomes nothing and disappears. Automaticity eats things, clothes, furniture, your wife, and the fear of war.” Therefore artists use their skills to make life strange again:

Art exists in order to restore the sensation of life, in order to make us feel things, in order to make a stone stony. The goal of art is to create the sensation of seeing, and not merely recognizing, things; the device of art is the “estrangement” of things and the complication of the form, which increases the duration and complexity of perception, as the process of perception is, in art, an end in itself.

In this view, art is a device employed to question the opaque quotidian and open our eyes to lucid reality. For Shklovsky, artists strive to complicate the things we take for granted and engage our perception and cognition beyond automatic processing. Almost one hundred years later, in his book  Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature , Alva Noë characterizes artworks as strange tools that have been stripped of their function in order to uncover the way in which we live our lives. Technology organizes us, whereas art and philosophy estrange this organization, as they are the “perversion of technology,” and therefore serve as weird implements that let us encounter ourselves. Noë believes that we are caught up in habitual practices that order our lives, and argues that art enables us to “break out of the myriad ways our movement, our thought, our conversation, our perception, our consciousness are organized or held captive.” Art estranges life and allows people to change it. This contemporary notion of art is in close agreement with century-old estrangement theory.

As I was writing about the oddness of art, I came across the news that “scientists have cured alcoholic rats by shooting lasers at their brains.” You could not make this up. Science reveals the awe-inspiring potential of reality. The estrangement theory gets it wrong—the outlandish nature of art is not unique and cannot be juxtaposed to the apathy and bleakness of the modern world, since reality is more complex and multifaceted than we imagine. Life regularly disrupts our habitual practices and reveals how little we understand it.

The world might be too complicated for humans to unravel its mysteries—science enables us to recognize this conundrum. Today, scientists are exploring the limitations of our knowledge of the universe. Huw Price and Peter Atkins argue that there may be questions that our brains are not capable of answering. They hypothesize that artificial intelligence might be better equipped to solve scientific problems. In his article “Now It’s Time to Prepare for the Machinocene,” Price writes that AI “might help us to solve many of the practical problems that defeat our own limited brains.” And Atkins, in his aptly titled essay “Why It’s Only Science That Can Answer All the Big Questions,” opines that the problem of consciousness can be tackled only by an ingenious contraption: “Maybe our comprehension of consciousness will have to be left to the artificial device that we thought was merely a machine for simulating it.” From quantum mechanics to the enigma of consciousness, reality far surpasses the strangeness of fiction. Science lets us untangle the befuddling riddles and attack the paradoxes that challenge the mind. In search of true bewilderment, we might be better advised to turn to scientific tools, which are stranger and more arduous to master than the crude instruments of art.

Scholars may say that literature is estranged from reality, but what they mean is that artists experiment with the form, not the substance of art. Such formal estrangement is entertaining, yet even here science offers more productive approaches. Scientists should be able to construct devices that can wield artistic tools without conscious regard for canonical patterns and convincingly outperform humans in formal creativity.

Artworks are known entities that become meaningful in the context of culture. There are social norms and aesthetic principles that shape artistic imagination and expression. The knowledge of art can be used to interpret the bizarre reality in which we live. In a recent opinion piece for the Financial Times , Robert Cooper sketches out the state of Western politics by alluding to popular works of fiction: “Welcome to Disneyland. Leading Brexiter Jacob Rees-Mogg is playing Mickey Mouse as the sorcerer’s apprentice from  Fantasia ; Theresa May is the wicked witch from  Snow White —though she is short on magic. Across the pond, an evil ogre known as Donald Trump is waiting to eat us all up.” Our cultural background makes it possible to imagine the surreal political landscape that Cooper wishes to explain. Thus, art domesticates the wild disarray of politics.

As the social world appears to grow more volatile, dangerous and polarized, people will turn to comedy shows that play with the incongruity between reality and imagination. The current state of global politics prompts us to flee into the realm of comic relief. Humor makes light of our fears and anxieties; it helps people reframe the social fabric and see it in a less threatening light. This coping strategy can make people feel better, but it does not necessarily empower them to grapple with their issues in earnest. Humor is a great escape from modern troubles, yet it does not offer real solutions. It trivializes the risks and repercussions of human behavior, and helps people tolerate the unbearable present and the unpredictable future.

Reeling away from alienating reality, we find ourselves at home in art. No wonder we are so susceptible to fake news and fictional narratives: they present imaginary events that confirm our entrenched beliefs and self-perpetuating prejudices. These fictions pander to conventional thought. It takes courage to exercise judgment and confront the messy world, piercing the comfortable bubbles of safe, fictional spaces. Making sense of reality is laborious and requires bravery. Immanuel Kant asserted that the Enlightenment encourages people to do just that—dare to know!

What happens in reality can be stranger than any plot imagined in a work of literature. For every extraordinary event in modern fiction, one can find dozens of freak accidents and unbelievable occurrences in the daily news. There is an online challenge game that asks people to google Florida man , followed by their birthday (e.g. Florida man 10 April), and the results are exhilarating and dumbfounding: Florida men throw alligators into drive-through windows , give inmates pot-soaked documents , lock keys in their cars to keep cops from searching them , get attacked by a neighborhood squirrel that has residents on high alert , put semen in a coworker’s water , etc. Life finds a way : it offers numerous examples of unfathomable creativity. It is weirder than literature and will not give us trigger warnings or respect our comfort zones.

The compulsion to police artistic efforts and impose moral boundaries upon imagination is not new, and underlies fiction’s tendency to become bland and familiar. Despite its claims to originality and insight, art is restrained by cultural biases. The standards and demands that streamline and discipline creative processes inevitably blind artists to aspects of reality that fail to conform and meet public expectations. As a consequence, the news from Florida has more drama and heart than a self-absorbed literary work about a lingering memory of a one-night stand.

Life is weirder than art. Fiction cannot do justice to the convoluted tapestry of reality, which confounds human imagination. Truth cannot be found in fiction: we need to rely on science and engage with reality to comprehend it. The estrangement theories of art paint a misleading and contradictory picture of creativity, for art does not estrange life, but gives us shelter from the ineffable world.

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Pavlo Shopin is a postdoctoral research fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in the English Department at the University of Freiburg. He holds a PhD in German from the University of Cambridge.

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Read it First: Truth is Stranger Than Fiction

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The Line Between Fact and Fiction

Journalists should report the truth. Who would deny it? But such a statement does not get us far enough, for it fails to distinguish nonfiction from other forms of expression. Novelists can reveal great truths about the human condition, and so can poets, film makers and painters. Artists, after all, build things that imitate the world. So do nonfiction writers.

To make things more complicated, writers of fiction use fact to make their work believable. They do research to create authentic settings into which we enter. They return us to historical periods and places that can be accurately chronicled and described: the battlefield at Gettysburg, the Museum of Natural History in New York City, a jazz club in Detroit. They use detail to make us see, to suspend our disbelief, to persuade us it was “really like that.”

For centuries writers of nonfiction have borrowed the tools of novelists to reveal truths that could be exposed and rendered in no better way. They place characters in scenes and settings, have them speak to each other in dialogue, reveal limited points of view, and move through time over conflicts and toward resolutions.

In spite of occasional journalism scandals that hit the national landscape like plane crashes, our standards are higher than ever. Historical examples of nonfiction contain lots of made-up stuff. It appears as if, 50 years ago, many columnists, sports writers and crime reporters—to name the obvious categories—were licensed to invent. The term piping— making up quotes or inventing sources—came from the idea that the reporter was high from covering the police busts of opium dens.

Testimony on our shady past comes from Stanley Walker, the legendary city editor of the New York Herald Tribune. In 1934 he wrote about the “monumental fakes” that were part of the history of journalism and offered:

It is true that, among the better papers, there is a general professional condemnation of fakers. And yet it is strange that so many of the younger men, just coming into the business, appear to feel that a little faking here and there is a mark of distinction. One young man, who had written a good story, replete with direct quotation and description, was asked by the city desk how he could have obtained such detail, as most of the action had been completed before he had been assigned to the story. “Well,” said the young man, “I thought that since the main facts were correct it wouldn’t do any harm to invent the conversation as I thought it must have taken place.” The young man was soon disabused.

In more recent times and into the present, influential writers have worked in hybrid forms with names such as “creative nonfiction” or the “nonfiction novel.” Tom Rosenstiel catalogues the confusion:

The line between fact and fiction in America, between what is real and made up, is blurring. The move in journalism toward infotainment invites just such confusion, as news becomes entertainment and entertainment becomes news. Deals in which editor Tina Brown joins the forces of a news company, Hearst, with a movie studio, Miramax, to create a magazine that would blend reporting and script writing are only the latest headlines signaling the blending of cultures. Prime time news magazines, featuring soap opera stories or heroic rescue videos, are developing a growing resemblance to reality entertainment shows such as “Cops,” or Fox programs about daring rescues or wild animal attack videos. Book authors such as John Berendt condense events and use “composite” characters in supposedly nonfiction work, offering only a brief allusion in an authors note to help clarify what might be real and what might not. Newspaper columnists are found out, and later removed, from the Boston Globe for confusing journalism and literature. A writer at the New Republic gains fame for material that is too good to be true. A federal court in the case of Janet Malcolm rules that journalists can make up quotes if they somehow are true to the spirit of what someone might have said. Writer Richard Reeves sees a deepening threat beyond journalism to society more generally, a threat he calls evocatively the “Oliver Stoning” of American culture.

The controversies continue. Edmund Morris creates fictional characters in his authorized biography of Ronald Reagan; CBS News uses digital technology to alter the sign of a competitor in Times Square during the coverage of the millennium celebration; a purported memoir of a wife of Wyatt Earp, published by a university press, turns out to contain fiction. Its author, Glenn G. Boyer, defends his book as a work of “creative nonfiction.”

To make things more complicated, scholars have demonstrated the essential fictive nature of all memory. The way we remember things is not necessarily the way they were. This makes memoir, by definition, a problematic form in which reality and imagination blur into what its proponents describe as a “fourth genre.” The problems of memory also infect journalism when reporters—in describing the memories of sources and witnesses—wind up lending authority to a kind of fiction.

The post-modernist might think all this irrelevant, arguing that there are no facts, only points of view, only “takes” on reality, influenced by our personal histories, our cultures, our race and gender, our social class. The best journalists can do in such a world is to offer multiple frames through which events and issues can be seen. Report the truth? they ask. Whose truth?

Caught in the web of such complexity, one is tempted to find some simple escape routes before the spider bites. If there were only a set of basic principles to help journalists navigate the waters between fact and fiction, especially those areas between the rocks. Such principles exist. They can be drawn from the collective experience of many journalists, from our conversations, debates and forums, from the work of writers such as John Hersey and Anna Quindlen, from stylebooks and codes of ethics, standards and practices.

Hersey made an unambiguous case for drawing a bold line between fiction and nonfiction, that the legend on the journalists license should read “None of this was made up.” The author of Hiroshima , Hersey used a composite character in at least one early work, but by 1980 he expressed polite indignation that his work had become a model for the so-called New Journalists. His essay in the Yale Review questioned the writing strategies of Truman Capote, Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe.

Hersey draws an important distinction, a crucial one for our purposes. He admits that subjectivity and selectivity are necessary and inevitable in journalism. If you gather 10 facts but wind up using nine, subjectivity sets in. This process of subtraction can lead to distortion. Context can drop out, or history, or nuance, or qualification or alternative perspectives.

While subtraction may distort the reality the journalist is trying to represent, the result is still nonfiction, is still journalism. The addition of invented material, however, changes the nature of the beast. When we add a scene that did not occur or a quote that was never uttered, we cross the line into fiction. And we deceive the reader.

This distinction leads us to two cornerstone principles: Do not add. Do not deceive. Lets elaborate on each:

Do not add . This means that writers of nonfiction should not add to a report things that did not happen. To make news clear and comprehensible, it is often necessary to subtract or condense. Done without care or responsibility, even such subtraction can distort. We cross a more definite line into fiction, however, when we invent or add facts or images or sounds that were not there.

Do not deceive . This means that journalists should never mislead the public in reproducing events. The implied contract of all nonfiction is binding: The way it is represented here is, to the best of our knowledge, the way it happened. Anything that intentionally or unintentionally fools the audience violates that contract and the core purpose of journalism—to get at the truth. Thus, any exception to the implied contract—even a work of humor or satire—should be transparent or disclosed.

To make these cornerstone principles definitive, we have stated them in the simplest language. In so doing, we may cause confusion by failing to exemplify these rules persuasively or by not offering reasonable exceptions. For example, by saying “Do not deceive,” we are talking about the promise the journalist makes to the audience. A different argument concerns whether journalists can use deception as an investigative strategy. There is honest disagreement about that, but even if you go undercover to dig for news, you have a duty not to fool the public about what you discovered.

Because these two principles are stated negatively, we decided not to nag journalists with an endless list of “Thou shalt nots.” So we’ve expressed four supporting strategies in a positive manner.

Be unobtrusive . This guideline invites writers to work hard to gain access to people and events, to spend time, to hang around, to become such a part of the scenery that they can observe conditions in an unaltered state. This helps avoid the “Heisenberg effect,” a principle drawn from science, in which observing an event changes it. Even watchdogs can be alert without being obtrusive.

We realize that some circumstances require journalists to call attention to themselves and their processes. So we have nothing against Sam Donaldson for yelling questions at a president who turns a deaf ear to reporters. Go ahead and confront the greedy, the corrupt, the secret mongers; but the more reporters obtrude and intrude, especially when they are also obnoxious, the more they risk changing the behavior of those they are investigating.

Stories should not only be true, they should ring true. Reporters know by experience that truth can be stranger than fiction, that a man can walk into a convenience store in St. Petersburg, Fla., and shoot the clerk in the head and that the bullet can bounce off his head, ricochet off a ceiling beam, and puncture a box of cookies.

If we ruled the world of journalism—as if it could be ruled—we would ban the use of anonymous sources, except in cases where the source is especially vulnerable and the news is of great import. Some whistleblowers who expose great wrongdoing fall into this category. A person who has migrated illegally into America may want to share his or her experience without fear of deportation. But the journalist must make every effort to make this character real. An AIDS patient may want and deserve anonymity, but making public the name of his doctor and his clinic can help dispel any cloud of fiction.

Fired Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle writes:

I used my memory to tell true tales of the city, things that happened to real people who shared their own lives with me. They represented the music and flavor of the time. They were stories that sat on the shelf of my institutional memory and spoke to a larger point. The use of parables was not a technique I invented. It was established ages ago by other newspaper columnists, many more gifted than I, some long since dead.

A parable is defined as a “simple story with a moral lesson.” The problem is that we know them from religious literature or ancient beast fables. They were fictional forms, filled with hyperbole. Mike Barnicle was passing them off as truth, without doing the reporting that would give them the ring of truth.

In the Middle Ages, perhaps, it could be argued that the literal truth of a story was not important. More important were the higher levels of meaning: how stories reflected salvation history, moral truth or the New Jerusalem. Some contemporary nonfiction authors defend invention in the name of reaching for some higher truth. We deem such claims unjustifiable.

The next guideline is to make sure things check out . Stated with more muscle: Never put something in print or on the air that hasn’t checked out. The new media climate makes this exceedingly difficult. News cycles that once changed by the day, or maybe by the hour, now change by the minute or second. Cable news programs run 24 hours, greedy for content. And more and more stories have been broken on the Internet, in the middle of the night, when newspaper reporters and editors are tucked dreamily in their beds. The imperative to go live and to look live is stronger and stronger, creating the appearance that news is “up to the minute” or “up to the second.”

Time frenzy, however, is the enemy of clear judgment. Taking time allows for checking, for coverage that is proportional, for consultation and for sound decision-making that, in the long run, will avoid embarrassing mistakes and clumsy retractions.

In a culture of media bravado, there is plenty of room for a little strategic humility . This virtue teaches us that Truth—with a capital T—is unattainable, that even though you can never get it, that with hard work you can get at it you can gain on it. Humility leads to respect for points of view that differ from our own, attention to which enriches our reporting. It requires us to recognize the unhealthy influences of careerism and profiteering, forces that may tempt us to tweak a quote or bend a rule or snatch a phrase or even invent a source.

So lets restate these, using slightly different language. First the cornerstone principles: The journalist should not add to a story things that didn’t happen. And the journalist should not fool the public.

Then the supporting strategies: The journalist should try to get at stories without altering them. The reporting should dispel any sense of phoniness in the story. Journalists should check things out or leave them out. And, most important, a little humility about your ability to truly know something will make you work harder at getting it right.

These principles have meaning only in the light of a large idea, crucial to democratic life: that there is a world out there that is knowable. That the stories we create correspond to what exists in the world. That if we describe a velvet painting of John Wayne hanging in a barber shop, it was not really one of Elvis in a barbecue joint. That the words between quotation marks correspond to what was spoken. That the shoes in the photo were the ones worn by the man when the photo was taken and not added later. That what we are watching on television is real and not a staged re-enactment.

A tradition of verisimilitude and reliable sourcing can be traced to the first American newspapers. Three centuries before the recent scandals, a Boston newspaper called Publick Occurrences made this claim on September 25, 1690: “… nothing shall be entered, but what we have reason to believe is true, repairing to the best fountains for our Information.”

We assert, then, that the principles of “Do not add” and “Do not deceive” should apply to all nonfiction all the time, not just to written stories in newspapers. Adding color to a black-and-white photo—unless the technique is obvious or labeled—is a deception. Digitally removing an element in a photo, or adding one or shifting one or reproducing one—no matter how visually arresting—is a deception, completely different in kind from traditional photo cropping, although that, too, can be done irresponsibly.

In an effort to get at some difficult truths, reporters and writers have at times resorted to unconventional and controversial practices. These include such techniques as composite characters, conflation of time, and interior monologues. It may be helpful to test these techniques against our standards.

The use of composite characters, where the purpose is to deceive the reader into believing that several characters are one, is a technique of fiction that has no place in journalism or other works that purport to be nonfiction.

An absolute prohibition against composites seems necessary, given a history of abuse of this method in works that passed themselves off as real. Although considered one of the great nonfiction writers of his time, Joseph Mitchell would, late in life, label some of his past work as fiction because it depended on composites. Even John Hersey, who became known for drawing thick lines between fiction and nonfiction, used composites in “Joe Is Home Now,” a 1944 Life magazine story about wounded soldiers returning from war.

The practice has been continued, defended by some, into the 1990s. Mimi Schwartz acknowledges that she uses composites in her memoirs in order to protect the privacy of people who didn’t ask to be in her books. “I had three friends who were thinking about divorce, so in the book, I made a composite character, and we met for cappuccino.” While such considerations may be well-meaning, they violate the contract with the reader not to mislead. When the reader reads that Schwartz was drinking coffee with a friend and confidante, there is no expectation that there were really three friends. If the reader is expected to accept that possibility, then maybe that cappuccino was really a margarita. Maybe they discussed politics rather than divorce. Who knows?

Time and chronology are often difficult to manage in complicated stories. Time is sometimes imprecise, ambiguous or irrelevant. But the conflation of time that deceives readers into thinking a month was a week, a week a day, or a day an hour is unacceptable to works of journalism and nonfiction. In his authors note to the best-seller Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil , John Berendt concedes:

Though this is a work of nonfiction, I have taken certain storytelling liberties, particularly having to do with the time of events. Where the narrative strays from strict nonfiction, my intention has been to remain faithful to the characters and to the essential drift of events as they really happened.

The second sentence is no justification for the first. Authors cannot have it both ways, using bits of fiction to liven up the story while desiring a spot on the New York Times nonfiction list.

Contrast Berendts vague statement to the one G. Wayne Miller offers at the beginning of King of Hearts , a book about the pioneers of open-heart surgery:

This is entirely a work of nonfiction; it contains no composite characters or scenes, and no names have been changed. Nothing has been invented. The author has used direct quotations only when he heard or saw (as in a letter) the words, and he paraphrased all other dialogues and statements—omitting quotations marks—once he was satisfied that these took place.

The interior monologue, in which the reporter seems to get into the head of a source, is a dangerous strategy but permissible in the most limited circumstances. It requires direct access to the source, who must be interviewed about his or her thoughts. Boston University writer-in-residence Mark Kramer suggests, “No attribution of thoughts to sources unless the sources have said they’d had those very thoughts.”

This technique should be practiced with the greatest care. Editors should always question reporters on the sources of knowledge as to what someone was thinking. Because, by definition, what goes on in the head is invisible, the reporting standards must be higher than usual. When in doubt, attribute.

Such guidelines should not be considered hostile to the devices of fiction that can be applied, after in-depth reporting, to journalism. These include, according to Tom Wolfe, setting scenes, using dialogue, finding details that reveal character and describing things from a character’s point of view. NBC News correspondent John Larson and Seattle Times editor Rick Zahler both encourage the reporter at times to convert the famous Five Ws into the raw material of storytelling, so that Who becomes Character, Where becomes Setting, and When becomes Chronology.

But the more we venture into that territory, the more we need a good map and an accurate compass. John McPhee, as quoted by Norman Sims, summarizes the key imperatives:

The nonfiction writer is communicating with the reader about real people in real places. So if those people talk, you say what those people said. You don’t say what the writer decides they said. You don’t make up dialogue. You don’t make a composite character. Where I came from, a composite character was a fiction. So when somebody makes a nonfiction character out of three people who are real, that is a fictional character in my opinion. And you don’t get inside their heads and think for them. You can’t interview the dead. You could make a list of the things you don’t do. Where writers abridge that, they hitchhike on the credibility of writers who don’t.

This leads us to the conviction that there should be a firm line, not a fuzzy one, between fiction and nonfiction and that all work that purports to be nonfiction should strive to achieve the standards of the most truthful journalism. Labels such as “nonfiction novel,” “real-life novel,” “creative nonfiction” and “docudrama” may not be useful to that end.

Such standards do not deny the value of storytelling in journalism, or of creativity or of pure fiction, when it is apparent or labeled. Which leads us to the Dave Barry exception, a plea for more creative humor in journalism, even when it leads to sentences such as “I did not make this up.”

We can find many interesting exceptions, gray areas that would test all of these standards. Howard Berkes of National Public Radio once interviewed a man who stuttered badly. The story was not about speech impediments. “How would you feel,” Berkes asked the man, “if I edited the tape to make you not stutter?” The man was delighted and the tape edited. Is this the creation of a fiction? A deception of the listener? Or is it the marriage of courtesy for the source and concern for the audience?

I come to these issues not as the rider of too high a horse but as a struggling equestrian with some distinctively writerly aspirations. I want to test conventions. I want to create new forms. I want to merge nonfiction genres. I want to create stories that are the center of the days conversation in the newsroom and in the community. 

In a 1996 series on AIDS, I tried to re-create in scene and dramatic dialogue the excruciating experiences of a woman whose husband had died of the disease. How do you describe a scene that took place years ago in a little hospital room in Spain, working from one person’s memory of the event?

In my 1997 series on growing up Catholic with a Jewish grandmother, I tried to combine memoir with reporting, oral history and some light theology to explore issues such as anti-Semitism, cultural identity and the Holocaust. But consider this problem: Along the way, I tell the story of a young boy I knew who grew up with a fascination with Nazis and constantly made fun of Jews. I have no idea what kind of man he became. For all I know, he is one of the relief workers in Kosovo. How do I create for him—and myself—a protective veil without turning him into a fictional character?

And finally, in 1999 I wrote my first novel, which was commissioned by the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group and distributed by the New York Times Syndicate. It appeared in about 25 newspapers. This 29-chapter serial novel about the millennium taught me from the inside out some of the distinctions between fiction and nonfiction.

There is certainly an argument to be made that fiction—even labeled fiction—has no place in the newspaper. I respect that. Thirty inches of novella a day may require a loss of precious newshole. But do we think less of John McPhee’s nonfiction in the New Yorker because it may sit next to a short story by John Updike?

It is not the fiction thats the problem, but the deception.

Hugh Kenner describes the language of journalism as:

… the artifice of seeming to be grounded outside language in what is called fact—the domain where a condemned man can be observed as he silently avoids a puddle and your prose will report the observation and no one will doubt it.

British scholar John Carey puts it this way:

Reportage may change its readers, may educate their sympathies, may extend—in both directions—their ideas about what it is to be a human being, may limit their capacity for the inhuman. These gains have traditionally been claimed for imaginative literature. But since reportage, unlike literature, lifts the screen from reality, its lessons are—and ought to be—more telling; and since it reaches millions untouched by literature, it has an incalculably greater potential.

So don’t add and don’t deceive. If you try something unconventional, let the public in on it. Gain on the truth. Be creative. Do your duty. Have some fun. Be humble. Spend your life thinking and talking about how to do all these well.

From Mark Twain to Ray Bradbury, Iconic Writers on Truth vs. Fiction

By maria popova.

Fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie.” ~ Stephen King in On Writing

Good fiction is made of what is real, and reality is difficult to come by.” ~ Ralph Ellison in Advice to Writers

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” ~ Mark Twain in Following the Equator

Playing around with symbols, even as a critic, can be a kind of kiddish parlor game. A little of it goes a long way. There are other things of greater value in any novel or story… humanity, character analysis, truth on other levels, etc., etc. Good symbolism should be as natural as breathing… and as unobtrusive.” ~ Ray Bradbury

The problem with fiction, it has to be plausible. That’s not true with non-fiction.” ~ Tom Wolfe in Advice to Writers

Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.” ~ Tennessee Williams in The Glass Menagerie

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt in The Autobiography Of Eleanor Roosevelt

You should never read just for ‘enjoyment.’ Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends’ insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick ‘hard books.’ Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god’s sake, don’t let me ever hear you say, ‘I can’t read fiction. I only have time for the truth.’ Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of ‘literature’? That means fiction, too, stupid.” ~ John Waters in Role Models

Fiction that adds up, that suggests a ‘logical consistency,’ or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.” ~ Joyce Carol Oates in The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates: 1973-1982

The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.” ~ Wallace Stevens in Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose

Art, though, is never the voice of a country; it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the individual, doing its best to speak, not comfort of any sort, but truth. And the art that speaks it most unmistakably, most directly, most variously, most fully, is fiction; in particular, the novel.” ~ Eudora Welty in On Writing

We have our Arts so we won’t die of Truth.” ~ Ray Bradbury in Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

— Published January 27, 2012 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/01/27/famous-authors-on-truth-vs-fiction/ —

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Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction: Don Juan and the Truth Claims of Genre

Dino Franco Felluga is associate professor of English at Purdue University. He is author of The Perversity of Poetry (2005) and Critical Theory: The Key Concepts (2015). He is also general editor of the four-volume Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature (2015) and of Britain, Representation, and Nineteenth-Century History ( branchcollective.org ).

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Dino Franco Felluga; Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction: Don Juan and the Truth Claims of Genre. Modern Language Quarterly 1 March 2016; 77 (1): 105–120. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00267929-3331613

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This essay examines the ways that Lord Byron’s Don Juan engages both the novel’s and the lyric’s claims to truth and virtue, thus setting up the maneuvers that would later be exploited by the Victorian verse novel.

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Is truth stranger than fiction? Yes, especially for science fiction

From warp drives to hyperspace, science fiction has continuously borrowed from, and sometimes anticipated, the state of the art in scientific progress. This has resulted in the perception that science and science fiction have a causal relationship, one finding direction from and fulfilling the science fantasy laid out before it.

But that is rarely the case, according to Lawrence Krauss, a Foundation professor in the School of Space and Earth Exploration and the Department of Physics at Arizona State University. No doubt, science fiction has taken inspiration from the cutting edge science of its day. And, as Stephen Hawking reaffirmed in the preface of Krauss's bestselling book, the Physics of Star Trek, science fiction helps inspire our imaginations. But Krauss believes science fiction is not a match for reality.

"Truth is stranger than fiction," Krauss said at the 2014 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago.

"The imagination of nature far exceeds the human imagination, which is why we constantly need to probe the universe via experimentation to make progress," he said. "In fact, I tend to think that what makes science fiction most interesting is what they missed, not what they got right."

Krauss gave his talk, "Physics of the future," on Feb. 14 at AAAS as part of a session titled "Where's my flying car? Science, science fiction and a changing vision of the future."

As examples, Krauss mentioned the World-Wide-Web, developed at the CERN scientific laboratory and which governs the world in ways that were not anticipated. He also described "The World Set Free," often quoted as a prophetic book by H.G. Wells, which was published in 1914 and anticipated the development of atomic weapons that could be used in war. It even coined the term "atomic bombs" decades before they became a harsh reality in the modern world and perhaps influencing some of the scientists who went on to create these weapons.

"Nevertheless not only did Wells' continually burning atomic weapons bear no resemblance to the engines of destruction in the real world," Krauss emphasized, "he thought it would unite the world into one society whereas we are painfully aware that it hasn't changed human thinking, except to divide the world into nuclear haves and have-nots."

"Nevertheless it is instructive, and fun, to compare the 'science' of science fiction with that of the real world," said Krauss, who also is the director of the Origins Project at ASU. "Rather than dwelling on things that don't work, it is fun to explore closely related things in the real world that might work."

Krauss discussed a variety of classical science fiction standbys -- space exploration, faster than light travel, time travel and teleportation. It seems almost tragic that science fiction is full of space travelers, freely and technologically effortlessly fulfilling their manifest destiny in space while we remain stuck on Earth. But the reality of the situation, according to Krauss, is that space travel costs a lot of money and energy, is a very risky endeavor and humans, as "hundred-pound bags of water," are not built for space.

On a more positive vein, Krauss described how exotica live warp drive and time travel are not ruled out by known laws of nature, though from a practical perspective even if possible in principle they are likely to be impossible in practice. While it is not likely that humans will be "beamed" from one place to another, quantum teleportation might revolutionize computing in ways that science fiction has just begun to come to grips with, said Krauss, who has authored more than 300 scientific publications and nine books, including the international bestseller The Physics of Star Trek, a tour of the Star Trek universe and our universe, and Beyond Star Trek, which addressed recent exciting discoveries in physics and astronomy and takes a look at how the laws of physics relate to notions from popular culture.

Krauss concluded that predicting the future of science if fraught with problems.

"The best part of physics of the future is that we have no idea what the exciting discoveries of the future will be," he said. "If I knew what the next big thing would be, I would be working on it now!"

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Home — Essay Samples — Arts & Culture — Postmodernism — The Benefit Of Using Postmodern Characteristics In “Stranger Than Fiction” 

The Benefit of Using Postmodern Characteristics in "Stranger than Fiction" 

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Published: Mar 19, 2020

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By the BOOK

Morgan Parker Says ‘Poetry Is Under Everything’ She Writes

Crafting the arguments in “You Get What You Pay For,” her first essay collection, “felt like pulling apart a long piece of taffy,” says the author of “Magical Negro.”

Credit... Rebecca Clarke

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What books are on your night stand?

The craft anthology “How We Do It,” edited by the great Jericho Brown, and Shayla Lawson’s astounding “How to Live Free in a Dangerous World.”

Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).

Probably on the smoking patio of a wine bar at happy hour on a sunny day, with a pencil in my hand and Dorothy Ashby or Ambrose Akinmusire playing through noise-canceling headphones. Or just a quiet morning on my couch with coffee, so engrossed I forget to flip the record.

What’s the last book you read that made you laugh?

“Erasure,” by Percival Everett . I picked up a used copy at Shakespeare & Company recently — after seeing Cord Jefferson’s brilliant adaptation , “American Fiction” — and even on a reread, it made me laugh out loud from the first page.

The last book that made you cry?

Weird or obnoxious if I say my own? Before that, it was probably Y.A.

Do you count any books as guilty pleasures?

That category’s filled to the brim and beyond by reality TV.

How do you organize your books?

Loosely or not at all. This is much to the horror of my Virgo pals, and while I used to take pride in navigating my shelves on familiarity alone, it’s something I’ve vowed to work on. Still, I doubt I’ll ever be an alphabetical type, and clearly I find genre segregation constricting. I do group things thematically, or even interpersonally — music biographies, Black Panthers, Harlem Renaissance; Jessica Hopper is next to John Giorno, and Chase Berggrun’s “R E D” is next to “Dracula”; Julie Buntin’s “Marlena” is beside her husband Gabe Habash’s “Stephen Florida”; Alison C. Rollins is next to her partner Nate Marshall is next to his bestie José Olivarez. At some point Hilton Als’s “White Girls” ended up next to “Male Fantasies,” and I don’t think I’ll ever separate them.

Which genres do you avoid?

There’s an essay in “You Get What You Pay For” where I mention reading a self-help book (as recommended by my now-former psychiatrist). I’d never read one before and have not since.

How does your poetry relate to your essay writing?

The truth is that poetry is under everything. It’s the lyric and sensory backbone. It’s what drives the sound, pace and imagery. (Everyone knows the best prose writers write and read poetry.) But while a poem strives for precision of language, the essay strives for precision of thought, even argument. In a poem, you can build (or approximate) an argument by plopping two images next to each other. It persuades by pointing. Writing these essays felt like pulling apart a long piece of taffy — I found myself reiterating a lot of what I’ve already expressed in poems, so it almost became a project of stretching out each poetic line, breaking down each concept to its root. The process is about asking, pondering, searching — and letting language take part in the answering.

You have a knack for terrific book titles. How did you name your new collection?

Thank you! I love a good title, but I also acknowledge the high bar I have set for myself. With this one, I struggled a bit, I think because it took me a while to understand the book myself, let alone how to introduce it to the world. The essays encompass a lot of seemingly disparate themes and even tonal registers, so framing the overall collection was daunting. I’d been tossing around a couple of options, including “Cheaper Than Therapy,” which appears as an essay title, when Jay-Z made the choice for me. I was in Italy at a residency, grieving the recent loss of my aunt and watching the “Big Pimpin’” video over and over as I worked on an essay about it for the book. I’d left my heavily tabbed copy of “Decoded” at home in Los Angeles, but was scrolling a PDF for details about the video shoot when I came across the line: “If the price is life, then you better get what you paid for.”

You describe yourself as foolish for believing “words could be the pathway to empathy and writing an active resistance against hate.” Might publishing this book change your mind?

Honestly? It’s my only hope.

What’s the last book you recommended to a member of your family?

“Heavy,” by Kiese Laymon, to my mom; Blair LM Kelley’s “ Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class,” to my dad; and “A Is for Activist,” to my 8-month-old cousin.

What do you plan to read next?

Phillip B. Williams’s “Ours” was just published, and I’ve been excited about it for literally years. Vinson Cunningham’s “Great Expectations” came out the same day as my book, so I plan to make that my tour read.

You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

June Jordan, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin — but I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t get just as much fun and fulfillment from a night with Angel Nafis, Danez Smith and Saeed Jones.

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Wealth of Geeks

15 Films That Showcase How Truth Can Be Stranger Than Fiction

Posted: October 23, 2023 | Last updated: March 7, 2024

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and these 12 fantastic films prove just that. Based on actual events, these movies capture the essence of real-life stories and bring them to the big screen with great inspiration and emotional impact. From harrowing tales of survival to inspiring accounts of heroism, these films will leave you in awe of the power of the human spirit.

1. Elvis (2022)

When the  Elvis  film adaptation dropped, fans were floored by the abundance of information that many didn’t know before. The truth about Elvis and his life was displayed on the big screen. 

2. Zodiac (2007)

Zodiac is about the true story of the Zodiac Killer, who had never officially been caught. Follow the journalists around the newsroom to see what it was really like at the time. Prepare to be amazed! 

3. Hacksaw Ridge (2016)

This movie is based on the true story of Desmond Doss, an American army medic who served during World War II. Doss was a conscientious objector who refused to carry weapons but still wanted to serve his country. He received the Medal of Honor for saving the lives of 75 men during the Battle of Okinawa.

4. The Revenant (2015)

The Revenant follows the story of Hugh Glass, a fur trapper left for dead by his comrades after being mauled by a bear. He must survive in the wilderness and seek revenge against the man who betrayed him. This film was i nspired by the life of frontiersman Hugh Glass, who in 1823 was mauled by a bear and left for dead by his companions but survived and embarked on a treacherous journey to seek revenge.

5. 127 Hours (2010)

Aron Ralston (played by James Franco) is a hiker who gets trapped under a boulder in a remote canyon in Utah. With limited resources and no one around to help, Ralston must find a way to free himself before it’s too late. The film is based on the harrowing experience of Aron Ralston, a mountaineer trapped under a boulder for five days (127 hours) while hiking in Utah, who was forced to amputate his arm to free himself.

6. Catch Me If You Can (2002)

Frank Abagnale Jr. is a con man who impersonated a pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer, among other things, and successfully cashed millions of dollars worth of fraudulent checks before being caught by the FBI. Frank Abagnale Jr’s real backstory has faced immense scrutiny and controversy.

While he has admitted that he embellished and exaggerated some aspects of his life story, many of the events depicted in Catch Me If You Can did happen. He did pose as a pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer, and he did pass millions of dollars in bad checks. However, some details in the movie were changed for dramatic effect.

7. The Aviator (2004)

This Scorsese-directed movie is a biographical drama about Howard Hughes (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), a billionaire businessman and aviation pioneer. It covers his life from the late 1920s to the 1940s, including his involvement in the film industry and his struggles with mental illness. Hughes struggled with obsessive-compulsive disorder and became increasingly reclusive in his later years.

8. Room (2015)

This movie tells the story of a young woman held captive in a small shed with her five-year-old son. The boy struggles to adjust to the outside world when they finally escape. This film was b ased on the novel by Emma Donoghue, which was inspired by the case of Elisabeth Fritzl, an Austrian woman who was held captive in a basement for 24 years by her father and gave birth to seven children during that time. Brie Larson’s depiction of Ma (based on Elisabeth) earned her an Oscar for Best Actress.

9. Erin Brockovich (2000)

This movie is based on the true story of a single mother who becomes a legal assistant and helps win a major lawsuit against a California power company accused of polluting a town’s water supply. Brockovich played a key role in a landmark case against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which was accused of contaminating a small town’s water supply.

10. I, Tonya (2017)

This movie is a biographical black comedy about the real life of Tonya Harding (played by Margot Robbie), a figure skater implicated in a scandalous attack on her rival, Nancy Kerrigan, in 1994.

11. Cast Away (2000)

This movie follows the story of Chuck Noland, a FedEx executive stranded on a deserted island after a plane crash. He must learn how to survive on the island and find a way back to civilization. While Cast Away isn’t directly based on a singular true story, it was inspired by a series of real events and stories.

12. Schindler’s List (1993)

This Steven Spielberg-directed movie is based on the true story of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of more than a thousand Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. The film won seven Oscars in 1994, including Best Picture.

13. The Pianist (2002)

This movie is based on the true story of Władysław Szpilman, a Polish-Jewish pianist who lived through the German occupation of Warsaw during World War II. He is forced into hiding and must use his talents to survive. The film was adapted from Szpilman’s memoir.

14. Apollo 13 (1995)

Hailed for making its viewers feel like they were part of the actual Apollo 13 crew, the movie will make you feel claustrophobic, scared, and hopeless. Based on the true story of the Apollo 13 mission in 1970, this Hollywood drama stars Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise, and Ed Harris. The film brings real space travel to your living room.

15. Ford v Ferrari (2019)

Ford v Ferrari is about how an American car competed against some of the top race cars in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966, and how Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles were able to make racing history with their Ford car.

Source: Reddit .

More From Wealth of Geeks - 25 Movies You May Only Watch Once Because They’ll Destroy You

Some movies can leave such a profound impact on us that we can't bear watching them again. Ever. These films stay with us long after the credits roll, haunting our thoughts and leaving us emotionally shattered. Here, we've compiled a list of 25 movies deemed one-time experiences by viewers on an online forum who have been through the emotional wringer.

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While some films from the 80s have become iconic, etching themselves into our collective memories, a treasure trove of lesser-known films has gradually faded into obscurity. Not to worry, we've compiled a list of 25 gems, based on IMDb, that graced our screens with their offbeat charm, eccentric characters, and captivating narratives that defy convention.

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Looking for movies that redefine the word horror? Sometimes, it's not just about the spooky movies you've heard of, sometimes it's the ones that delve deep into horror that have a greater impact. Sit back, try to relax, and dive into these 12 films that are absolutely bone-chilling.

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