Friday, April 3, 2009

Real life is weirder than fiction

There is a lot of truth in the statement of Stranger than Fiction. I heard somewhere that in fiction, the story has to make sense but real life does not has a script. It will act as it will and that is why there is a lot of stories on how people do certain things which is way weirder than what you find between story books.

When one writes a fiction, there is the introduction of characters and storyline, a climax and finally a finale. Even in movies usually the stories go like a tangent which most filmakers follow. If the film kind of follow real lie, which films that tried to be Oscar contender usually are, it became kind of boring. People will ask where is the climax? Why was the story did not fully develop and why was there was no ending. This is what audience will say, not the critics who will usually try to look deeper. These are in films and books.

Real life never play like that. Stories intertwined with each other. There will be so many characters that they can't pin down just one main character. That man you buy your breakfast from, what stories can you gauge by looking at his face? That cleaner at your office? The people you meet every other day? Each has their own stories and I bet all are spectacular in their own.

One of my favourite writer, Jeffrey Archer, writes both fiction and non-fiction really well. He has books which compiled real stories from his prison days, a memoir and all the while he still writes fiction. I was an avid fan of Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less which is about how 4 men tried to get back all the money a millionaire swindled from them. He even managed to make the fiction seems like non-fiction as some of his stories did not play out like any ordinary fiction.

Maybe that is the beauty of life, you will never know what will be, will be. Que sera, sera... 

2 comments:

  1. I didn't know Jeffrey ARcher was once a prisoner ...

    now that intrigues me to check out his books :D

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  2. He was also a Member of Parliament in UK before he was found guilty of perjury (lying in court)

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