Who Will Win the Booker Prize 2023

So tonight, at the rather late time of 9pm the winner of the Booker prize  will be announced, as with tradition at a grand dinner where all the shortlisted authors will be waiting with bated breath.

the LongList

With a record number of new authors on the list, and a high number of women writers, the Booker are justifiably proud of their longest this year, and also point out that none of the six shortlisted authors have been shortlisted before 

I  have read nine of the books chosen to be judged. And of those 6 didn't make it to the shortlist. For each book I've read, I've marked it with five possible points. Not sure how the judges do it, but I worked like this; 

ONE POINT for the crafts of writing; dramatic tension, pace, light and shade and mood, structure                         choice of Point of View, appropriate imagery

ONE POINT for the narrative voice and its arc.

ONE POINT for characterisation; did I fall in love (or hate!) with the characters?

ONE POINT for creativity 

ONE POINT  for sheer brilliance

The Longlist - these are the books that didn't make it to the shortlist. 

In Acenstion Martin MacInnes                                FOUR POINTS

The House of Doors.  by Tan Than Eng                  FOUR POINTS

All the Little Bird-Hearts                                         FOUR POINTS

Pearl    by Siân Hughes                                            TWO POINTS 

How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney                   THREE POINTS 

Old God's Time   by Sebastian Barry                      TWO POINTS 

A Spell of Good Things by  Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀.   THREE POINTS

                                 

                           

        The Shortlist - these are the books that are up for tonight's prize

The Bee Sting            THREE POINTS

Western Lane           THREE POINTS

Prophet Song           FOUR AND A HALF POINTS

This Other Eden        FOUR POINTS

If I Survive You        sadly, not read

Study for Obedience    THREE POINTS 

As you can see, my points system stirs up some problems. I was really sorry to see that The House of Doors. missed out on the short list. Set mostly in Malaysia around 1911, and featuring a fictional narrator who is telling the story of three historical figures, this scored highly with me for everything apart from 'sheer brilliance' and I  recommend it as more accessible and enjoyable  than Tan Twan Eng's previous booker longlisted novel, The Garden of Evening Mists.

All the Little Bird-Hearts  was another favourite of mine, especially after receiving an unnecessarily vitriolic review in the Sunday Times Culture supplement, which seemed to be suggesting a book with the theme of an autistic woman, writing by a woman with autism, would not be worth reading, let alone judging. I loved it  –– it was original and inventive, heart-warming with a strong narrative voice, a very enjoyable plot and a charming outcome. 

But neither of these had the  'sheer brilliance' that is needed to win the booker. Neither, I feel has any of the books I've read from the shortlist. Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein was very creative and cleverly written and for those reasons has 'Booker' painted all over it, but it rather left me cold. I didn't fall in love with the unnamed narrator, and didn't thank the author for offering little, if any dialogue. Pearl   by Siân Hughes, is beautifully crafted and I'm glad it had its longest moment, but there is one book that really should have moved forward and didn't.

In Ascension, by Martin MacInnes was described by The Guardian as 'a cosmic wonder'. The review  went on....MacInnes evokes a spread of human intimacies, simultaneously capturing them in the largest possible contexts.... I was captivated by the enormous story that this long book contains as it moves from Northern Europe and an unhappy childhood to the deepest trenches of the ocean, to quest for further space travel to to darkest reaches of the solar system. I was amazed that I kept loving this book as I am usually left cold by 'Sci Fi', but although this novel fulfils the themes of that genre, it is also warm and  atmospheric, richly described, full of humanity and humility,  detailed, yet amazingly profound.

Western Lane, a story about a bereaved family is almost slender enough to be called a novella, and on finishing it I felt this book would have benefitted from a more rounded approach; the main character was the youngest of three sisters, all, having just lost their mother. If we'd seen what the other sisters were thinking and feeling, as well, this might have recommended itself to me a little more.  

This Other Eden, by Paul Harding is skilfully written, with strong characters and great narrative drive, and is extremely imaginative, with it's Apple Island setting, but I honestly don't think it should have that final point, for sheer brilliance, what the Booker describes as 'the outstanding book of its year'. 

 The Bee Sting, by Paul Murray, the story of the deteriorating lives of an Irish family which starts off in an extremely entertaining and readable manner, but I needed stamina to get to the end. 

And the winner is:

Prophet Song, by Paul Lynch

The Booker website described the winning novel as a ‘triumph of emotional storytelling; a crucial book for our current times’.

 The author received £50,000 (which he ays he'll spend on paying off his mortgagee!) The event was hosted by Samira Ahmed and  Lynxg was presented with his trophy by Shehan Karunatilaka, the 2022 winner.

Heralded in one review as Prophet Song captures some of the biggest social and political anxieties of our age, from the rise of political extremism to the global plight of refugees 

Paul Lynch said of the book, ‘Prophet Song is partly an attempt at radical empathy. I wanted to deepen the reader’s immersion to such a degree that by the end of the book, they would not just know, but feel this problem for themselves’    

I fully endorse the judges decision, and that in itself surprised me! I loved this story. I read it in a couple of sittings (it's not terribly long, and totally compelling). The story is of 'our time' but is also timeless; I've seen this story in 1940 movies, in South American movies, in Kafka stories, in Russian stories.  It's that story of very normal people; a very normal Irish family who are swept up somehow in the country's move to far-right authoritarian extremism. As tyranny takes over the usually peaceful, liberal politics, the father disappears into jail, along with thousands of others, and his wife, with two teenagers, a younger boy and a baby, is left to make sense of what is happening. 

Perhaps one of the stand-out techniques Lynch uses is his disregard for paragraphs. He dispenses with them entirely, so that streams of dialogue run along lines, until we finally get to the end of that section of prose. It's a risky devise, but he pulls it off because, like the story itself, the layout continually prevents you even taking a breath.

It's a disturbing novel, one that needed to be written here in the northwest of Europe, but I found it problematic to read in bed, as the words insidiously creep into my dreams.

My points system worked well for this book; 

ONE POINT: especially for the way he builds tension in the story

ONE POINT for the compelling narrative voice and its arc.

ONE POINT for characterisation; I was terrified for the characters!

ONE POINT for creativity 

HALF A POINT  for sheer brilliance

Lynch was one of four Irish writers to make this year’s longlist  and he's  the sixth Irish author to win the Booker Prize, after Iris Murdoch, John Banville, Roddy Doyle and Anne Enright and Anna Burns.

In the keynote speech of the evening,  Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, described the ways in which books had saved her when she was in solitary confinement in Tehran.

You can watch the event on  YouTube, featuring interviews with special guests.

Donna Tartt, Carel Fabritius, and The Goldfinch

 

Once morning in 1654, in the city of Delft in Holland, there was a "thunderclap". That was the way the people of Delft described the  explosion of a  factory containing 90,000 pounds of gunpowder. Large sections of the city were devastate, and 100 people died. 

Carole Fabritius was among them, and that may be why so few people have heard of this artist, who had been a  pupil of Rembrandt, and, before he reached his thirties, was already an  acclaimed painter of the Dutch school. He left a sadly small portfolio of work, and it's clear might have gone on to paint so much more, if he had survived the blast.

One of his most beloved works is also one of the most upsetting, from the viewpoint of an animal lover; The Goldfinch.  Just 9X13 inches, and possibly as a trompe d'oeil and perhaps a clever part of a window shutter, it is beautifully rendered. A small songbird sits on its perch, staring out at the viewer. Every feather is a perfect rendering. And the little gold chain that prevents the bird from seeking its freedom is lost in shadow, you have to peer closely to see that the goldfinch is a captive. It was sitting in Fabritius's workroom, almost next door to the factory, when the blast destroyed almost everything there, including the artist himself.

Donna Tartt launching The Goldfinch in Amsterdam
. Photograph: Bas Czerwinski/AFP/Getty Images

When I read Donna Tartt's third novel in 2014, titled The Goldfinch, I was expecting something grand, something with an explosion at the centre of it, because her previous two novels had been acclaimed and their powerful stories were still in my mind.

She certainly offered an explosion; moments after the story begins, a bomb blows out the New York's Metropolitan Museum. 14 year old Theo Decker is in one section, his mother elsewhere. She is killed by the blast.  As Theo tries to extricate himself from the wreckage, a dying man tells him to take the small, framed picture  lying in the dust. He thinks to  take to his mother for safekeeping and finds his way home; she never arrives. From then on, The Goldfinch, with its imploring theme of captive beauty, is his guilty secret, and a physical connection to his mother. It becomes something he can't bear to be rid of but something he cannot admit he possesses.

How fittingly linked these two stories are. The fiction of a boy who walked out of an explosion with the painting of an artist who died in an explosion.  The Goldfinch, painted in the year of Fabricius's death, was one of only about 12 of his paintings to have survived the tragic explosion, and  in Tartt's story, it survives again, albeit in a setting it has never traveled to; it's hung in The Haig. 

I was reminded of The Goldfinch when I read Laura Cumming's latest book

on art; Thunderclap. Although the focus of this book is Fabritius and his works, she also looks at her own approach to art, as an art critic. She says, 'We see pictures in time and place. We cannot see them otherwise. They are fragments of our lives, moments of existence…' I wonder if that is also true of fiction; certainly, a school of literature theory suggests that works can only be judged though the eyes of the reader, who brings their own emotional smörgåsbord to the interpretation.

Certainly, I began reading The Goldfinch knowing nothing about the painting, or having even heard of Carel Fabritius, but I devoured this long book; it reminded me of Dickens in its complexity and with its whirlwind of amazing characters, and its 'cause and effect' plotting – the dying man who tells Theo to take the painting is guardian to a young girl named Pippa, who was also in the museum when the bomb exploded, and is the only person who Theo feels can understand his heart, as they both lost someone dear in the explosion. Their lives will collide and separate, repeatedly, throughout the book. 

And yet, Tartt told The Telegraph, shortly after publishing the book that she hadn't even known about the Delft Thunderclap when she wrote it.  She said. 'The the first time I saw it, I connected very strongly with it. This little bird, so brave and so dignified, and then you see that terrible little chain…' She was simply looking for the right painting, that would be small enough to carry and would appeal to a child. 

The rôle of synchronicity in creating a novel can make one gasp. For, if Tartt didn't know much about Fabritius’ death when she chose the painting, why is her central character called Theo Decker? Because at the time of his death Fabritius was painting the portrait of a church deacon named Simon Decker. 

Writing is full of such coincidence, as Tartt admits: 

'It all fit together in ways I could never have imagined. When coincidences like that start happening you know the muses are at your side. ”

It's good to know that when such amazing moments occur, the writer should grasp them with both hands. 

Literary Giants of New York and the Algonquin Hotel

When  my daughter, Bex and I were in New York, we were determined to find out more about the literary side of the city, so we went to the Algonquin Hotel to meet Kevin, who knew all about writing and the Big Apple. 

The first thing we saw when we arrived at the Algonquin Hotel, was the cat in the window, snuggled up in a little bed for the world to see. This was Matilda  the Algonquin cat, who has been resident for something like 40 years. Each time a cat dies, a new cat is brought from a refuge. If it is male, it's called Hamlet. If it is female, it's called Matilda. Each puss wanders the hotel at will, but has this special basket in the front window, looking out onto the road. The hotel is located on Times Square,  with Yale, Harvard and the Yacht club headquarters nearby. The hotel façade is imposting and grand, and Matilda gives the place a more welcoming feel.

'I wonder what Algonquin means,' mused my daughter.           I laid down a dollar bet that the hotel name was of First Nations origin. But we were both puzzled – we'd done our homework and knew that the original inhabitants were called The Lenape, who had named the place Manahatta, meaning 'hilly island'.

When Kevin arrived, this was the first question we had for him, and he had the answer; the Algonquin people  lived in the Ottawa Valley for at least 8,000 years before Europeans arrived in North America. But the source of the word Algonquin is unclear. 'It is said to mean  “at the place of spearing fishes and eels from the bow of a canoe”,' he said.

Great – I'd won my bet. I tucked my dollar winnings away as Kevin led us through the hotel foyer, all Art Deco dark wood paneling and golden lighting.  He explained that the hotel had been built in 1902,  was twelve stories tall,  and shaped like an "H". Bex and I agreed that this was the hotel we'd stay at if we were ever to ship up in Manhattan again.

He walked us over to the famous literary round table, set in an alcove behind the reception area. 'This is where all the literati of New York would meet between the first and second world wars,' Keven told us. 'It was known for it's lively, witty, and sophisticated conversations.'

Dorothy Parker

The group included Harpo Marx, Dorothy Parker and Harold Ross and his wife, Jane Grant, who founded The New Yorker. Also members were the actor Peggy Wood, George Kaufman, Margaret Leech Pulitzer and Donald Ogden Stewart who won an Oscar for The Philadelphia Story, Herman J. Mankiewicz, who won an Oscar for co-writing Citizen Kane. The rumour was that people like F Scot Fitzgerald,  Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner may have also dropped in for lunch; why not, these were wise-cracking wits who enjoyed pranks and word teasers, such Dorothy Parker's wordplay fun with: 'you can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think…Brevity is the soul of lingerie…If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to…'

Above the large round table in the alcove is a painting of the club, showing many of its members. 

Keven took us for a walk around Hell's Kitchen, which is an inner-city area that was reputed to be like ‘the kitchens in Hell itself’ according to the NYPD of the prohibition era. There he pointed out where great writers of the time lived. He took us to the homes of James Thurber and Eugene O’Neil and F Scot Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. A haunt of the young James Baldwin was  his Aunt Barbara's candy shop near Fifth Avenue. She would later provide inspiration for the character of Florence in Baldwin’s first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, published in 1952. Colson Whitehead also lives in Manhattan, where he set his masterpiece, The Colossus. This opens with the 'awful truth' about being a Native New Yorker – 'it leaves you ruined for anywhere else.' 

Most of these writers had written at times for the New Yorker, a magazine I know especially for its amazing short stories and brilliant cover illustrations. We found ourselves in the offices of The New Yorker, the New York magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction and poetry. Although it's been around since 1925, it is still the pinnacle of good journalism, and has published some of the most famous short stories, including Annie Prouix's  'Brokeback Mountain' and Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery'.

This office was the opposite of the Algonquin; it was plate glass and steel, giving off an atmosphere of being ultra-modern, professional  and efficient. But Bex and I were already longing for Art Deco, and we found ourselves back at the Algonquin, ready to dine very close to (but sadly not on) the round table. 

 

How Authors Plot, and how They Muse

 

I've just finished a marvellous novel called Still Life, by Sarah Winman. In its  400+ pages, we visit Florence in the Second World War, post-war London, and Florence during the flood of 1966 and Europe at the start of the 20th century.  Moving between these real events are a wide cast of characters, most of them allowing life to take them where it will, and land them wherever it pleases. In The New York Times, the main character, Ulysses Temper is described as  'a searching, wandering protagonist' but it's not just 'Temp' that wanders; the entire story behaves like a river journey. As I reached the final pages, I began to ask, 'what did Winman want to say in this novel?' The Kirkus Review notes this is ''the story of their friendship, though it is also a story of the creation of a family of friends', New York Times suggests, Does Life Imitate Art or Is It the Other Way Around? and the Independent says it is an 'exquisite testament to life, love and art. 

Fair points, the story is all about the art of Florence and 'odd families' especially. But thinking about the characters, I've decided that what Winman especially  wanted to say is: Ordinary People are Really Extraordinary. 

Ulysses is a young soldier in the Allied advance in Italy in 1944 where he works with Evelyn Skinner, a 64-year-old art historian. They form a friendship bond which remain after their paths diverge, But while he's in Florence, Ulysses 'talks down' an elderly gentleman who had decided to take his own life. They go back to the man's lavish but lonely apartment, and again, a bond is formed. Meanwhile in London his soon to be ex-wife, Peg has fallen for a GI called Eddie and gives birth to a daughter she names Alys, but calls 'the kid'. Ulysses is demobbed, and goes back to working at his friend Col's pub, where Claude the blue parrot is a tavern talking point but hated by Col. The  post-war decade moves on, and the novel meanders through many a story, until Ulysses hears that the person who's life he saved has bequeathed him his large apartment. He decides to go back to Florence, and asks his old mate Cress to come with him. Peg, who still yearns for Eddie and is not a good mother to Alys, persuades Temps to  take 'the kid'.  Cress secretes the unhappy Claude  into a bag and off they all go, to live in Italy. They convert some of the inheritance into a thriving pensione. Alys soaks up the Italian life as she grows into a woman and Cress, who was able to communicate with trees in London, can also communicate with trees in Italy.

Throughout the next three decades,  Ulysses continues to love Peg, Peg continues to dream of Eddie, Cress finds Italian love in his golden years, and Alys finds love with another teen girl. Ulysses goes back to creating globes of the world, and in this way, is crazily linked back to Evelyn, who keeps an eye open for her old war friend, but constantly misses him until, one day, they find themselves all together; now a largish group of young and old, English and Italian.

The story, then is a winding route, just like a river. I loved it but immediately thought; 'I don't write like this; I couldn't plot like this'. I'm a bit of a plot junkie; Winman is clearly a 'characterphile'. (I created these terms to describe different 'kinds' of plotter; you can read about them here.) 

When I start a book, I'm usually inspired by landscape, my first point of inspiration. In my Shaman Mystery series a walk, years ago, through the Somerset Levels, sparked my interest in the area, followed by a distant, then closer, then close view of the Hinkley Power Station, which is featured in On the Gallows. Landscapes do it for me, but there are many other starting points.

Louise Doughty makes a similar point in her article, Taking a Line for a Walk (Mslexia No 99).  'My most recent book', she says, 'arrived – like Apple Tree Yard and Platform Seven before it – with a strong visual image'. She then takes that image 'for a walk', asking questions of it, until she has a scene, 'followed by a scene showing what happens next on the journey...until I worked it out, some 100,000 words later.'

This is a great way to write a novel if you are a 'characterphile'. If however you are a 'plot junkie' the idea might fill you with horror! What, no chapter by chapter outline, no timeline, to plot points to lead you on? I'm a plot junkie, but I'm quite tempted to have a go at this meandering method, the next time such an image, or landscape, enters my mind. Or, as happened this time to Doughty, a line comes to you, out of the blue. The same questions can be asked of this line or phrase or sentence, the same walk take, until, chapter upon chapter, you find an answer. 

Doughty talks about how the 'synapses in your brain are prompted to join up by something'. She doesn't go on to say what that 'something' is, but I would suggest we go back to the Ancient Greeks, who personified the inspirations that arise from intuition, or 'synapses' if you like, as Muses. The nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, or Memory, the Muses prompt those they visit to remember what they have forgotten. Muses with a special affinity for writers are: 

Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry

courtesy of Wikipedia

Clio, the Muse of history

Euterpe, the Muse of lyric poetry

Melpomene, the Muse of tragedy

Erato, the Muse of love poetry

Polyhymnia, the Muse of sacred poetry, and

Thalia, the Muse of comedy

Sadly, there isn't a Muse for  short stories, as these weren't around in ancient Greece. Their stories were narrated orally, or dramatically, and poetry was used in both forms, especially as it helps with memory...Mnemosyne…when retelling a story!

Like Doughty, one should never sit around and  wait for a muse to visit, in the hope she'll just 'show up'. She should be seduced to come to you. Doughty had gone to Amsterdam, 'wandering around the city for a week...with an empty notebook...' in the hope that she would 'encounter my next book'.  She was seducing her Muse, and finally, was obliged. 'What do you do when you're in the tase of creativity that I might as well call 'pre-technique', where all your struggles for plot construction or character development are useless because you don't have the foggiest idea what you book is about?' Suddenly a line came to Doughty. The opening line to a story she didn't yet know. The Muse had descended. She could begin. 

It seems a bit extreme to visit a different country in order to find your Muse, but you should be on the alert at all times. When your muse pops in every so often to drop a story idea on you, sit up and pay attention.

When you have a story idea, write it down in a journal or notebook. You can't write every story right away, so put it in the pickling juice and go on. Also remember the wonderful 'Muse-filled'  Miscellany File, or Commonplace Book, which I talk about here. Read, look through your ideas from time to time, crossing out the ones that have lost their muster. Also cross out the ones that seem too cumbersome. Keep the simple ideas and the ones that give you chills in your spine. Maintain this practice and you'll find that you always have a few good story ideas in the queue. 

What's the different between a Plot Development and a Plot Event? And what exactly are they?

There are masters of plotting who create plot and story with incredible ease.

That's the mystique; what newer writers seem to believe about established writers. 

But that simply isn't true. What successful writers do to 'make' their stories 'zing' is a lot of hard work, done long before a final draft every shows its fact to the reading pubic. 

Plot events, and plot developments rule the roost when getting your story from its beginning to its conclusion. Likewise, they are the easiest way to create a journey through a story idea that will successfully turn it into a story, whether that's a novel, or a short story.

A plot event is an incident that touches the lives (directly, indirectly, for good or ill) of the main characters without altering the trajectory or outcome of the plot itself.  Events are useful for  temporarily raising tension, developing characterisation, perspective, relationships, and ‘fill the middle slump’, helping to interest the reader and get them turning the page at all stages of the story. But events never alter the outcome of the story. 

For instance, in A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, the lovely Christmas Day scene at Bob Cratchit's house is an event. It enriches the story, and explains his life and family, but it doesn't alter the outcome of the story. 

A plot development is an incident or happening that not only touches the lives of the main characters, but also alters the plot trajectory or outcome. It might be either a cause or an effect. 

(A plot development is sometimes called ‘a plot point’ or ‘a story beat’. They’re basically the same things. )

For instance, the arrival Marley's ghost at Scrooge's beside is a plot development. In fact it's the first plot point of the story, after introducing Cratchit and Scrooge at their place of work. This moment changes Scrooge's life forever. 

Although both types of incident can crank up emotional energy, pace and atmosphere and create a gripping read, only plot developments lead on to new causes and effects and ensure that your story contains what makes stories enjoyable to read: action and event, change, wonder and surprise. Subsequently, the right developments will lead to a deeply satisfying conclusion, whether in a short story or a novel. 

However, ‘events’ can turn into ‘developments’, sometimes simply because the writers has  deliberately plotted  a development to look like an event, which then ‘grows like Topsy’ as the story moves on. Sometimes, serendipitously, as ideas develop, around the plot, moments that seemed like an event when first created, will become a development. 

An interesting and useful thing to do is build a chart in which  all Developments are noted separately in chronological. Sometimes this can be revealing or even inspiring! 

 

Here are three tips to successfully navigating your own 

Plot Development Chart:

• Start a chart at any stage of your writing process
•  If you’re just beginning your story, it will help you see where to start and where to spin off ideas to move your piece forward. 
• As you map your ideas, you’ll discover that they help to propagate more ideas. 
• If you’re stuck at a particular point in your story, you may want to update or create a new map so it reflects—or creates—fresh ideas and story structure. 
• If you’ve already outlined or written most of your story, a story map may point out where your structure is weak or not fully developed by what you can’t fill in, or by what you’re struggling to answer. Steadily go through the chapters from the beginning and note where the developments are.
• You can also include plot events, but it's better to start with developments to keep your thinking clear (see below).
• Don’t get anxious about the process. 
• Write what you know—and put it where you think it belongs. You can always change it once you have a clearer understanding of what you're writing about.
  
  
  
• You’re simply placing story developments on a chart in the order you think they will happen. 
• You can mix things around or change ideas as you go.
• Everything you write can be considered to be ‘written in sand, not stone’ until you develop a stronger idea. 
• Sometimes what you think is the beginning hook may change to be the climax or a conflict once you better understand your story. 
• Use SHOW, DON’T TELL
• steadily go through the chapters from the beginning and create
• Try to capture ideas about development that SHOW, rather than TELL. Use phrases that show the story, and will mean something to you when you read the chart back.
• Try asking ‘what if’ as you create this chart, and think of this as a road map that  helps you plot your ‘story travel plans’.

Creating a Plot Development Chart can serve as a visual outline that helps you see the direction your story is taking and whether you’ve overlooked any major points of interest along the way while you're writing plot structure. 

Once you have the broad outline of developments, you can slide the 'plot events' into the mix. Maybe you'll need to start a new chart for this as things can get complicated. 

Do have a go; either at enriching the story you're writing now, or by starting a new story you might be thinking about, by using the chart. 

Let me know at Kitchen Table Writers by leaving a comment in the comment area 

Enjoy!

The Truth about Non-fiction

 

Is this the truthiness?

Truthiness – word of the year in the Merriam-Webster for 2005, even though it was coined on Stephen Colbert's US TV comedy satire show, to demonstrate how people deceive themselves, despite the evidence or any logic that disputes their belief. Truthiness can range from ignorant assertions of falsehoods to propaganda intended to sway opinions. The invented word was supposed to be 'funny for give minutes', but it has emerged as a major subject for discussion in US politics. 

The truth in journalism is set in stone: it’s not a malleable or debatable concept. This was a lesson the infamous journalist Steven Glass learnt. In Shattered Glass,  a 2003 biographical drama film, the writer Billy Ray told the true story of Glass, who was fired by the The New Republic magazine after inventing most of the 'facts' in his articles.  Some of his articles were funny, if untrue, such as the 'convention of Monica Lewinsky memorabilia but some  articles were racist and  sexist lies. His fabrications nearly destroyed the reputable magazine, founded  a hundred years before.

But there is a difference between hard journalism – that is an articles trusted to be as much the truth as the writer can possibly know and pass on –  and creative kinds of non-fiction writing, such as memoir, creative journalism, narrative literature and possibly even bio-fiction. These are genres that are increasing in popularity, and while these may not always relate the exact facts of a previous event, they hope to create a truth with their creativity, rather than 'truthiness'.

Some writers have trouble with the idea that  “creative writing” and “non-fiction” go together. A start, perhaps is to think of your writing as “told well” rather than “made up.” It's still confusing though, and leads us into a deeper consideration of what we mean by 'writing truthfully'. Bio-fIction has been slated in the past as misrepresenting what really happened. But that is not what the creative writer wants, or aims for. They are not attempting to hide behind 'truthiness', but rather create something that will enter the reader's heart. 

Creative non-fiction writing is able to tell both the small story – the damming of a river, the building of a house, an untimely death – and the bigger one, the human narrative with its enduring themes. In doing this, imaginative non-fiction writers commonly use the techniques of fiction – the creation of a narrative arc, character development, scene-setting, action sequences, dialogue and interior monologue. True stories told using these techniques have both the drama of fiction and the force of fact. Creative non-fiction, though factual, can read like fiction in that it draws you in with attention to detail, clear imagery, metaphors, and other creative writing techniques. 

In Wolfe Hall, and indeed her three books on Cromwell, Hilary Mantel attempts, not to move away to the truth, but to illuminate it. In her Reith Lecture she said: From history, I know what they do, but I can’t with any certainty know what they think and feel. That fictional approach allowed her to dig into her character's minds and create a fully realised person, who has, in a strange way, particularly through the TV dramas taken from the books, become the 'real Cromwell'.

One of the approaches the non-fiction writer takes is to know that what they are doing will convey the truth. To convey a truth may mean writing something that actually didn't happen in quite that way, or quite that order. It may mean looking at what people might have thought, or how their motives might have moved their intentions. 

The line between life writing and fiction is often blurred: even when writing autobiographical material the writer cannot clearly remember absolutely everything. And, to make the events of the past more clear, and indeed, more readable, my massage time, and description,  and dialogue, and interior monologue to aid the telling of a truth. 

Finding your comfort zone within this fusion of fact and imagination may take a little time, and a little thought. But try not to worry whether your life writing will be

strictly non-fiction or veer over into  bio-fiction. A rule of thumb is to be more focused on the creativity of your work than what category it falls into.

Penelope Lively’s distinctive memoir, Making it Up, addresses truth and imagination head-on by taking specific moments from her life and rewriting. In the chapter Imjin River, she writes about her husband, Jack Lively, in this speculative way:

    I might never have known him. We might never have met. There might never have been our children, and theirs, and the forty-one years of love and life and shared experiences, and those long hard months at the end. What follows supposes what so nearly happened; the fate of a young man who is a shadow of Jack for whom events ran differently.

The definitions of ‘fiction’ and ‘non-fiction’ are, therefore, subtle and flexible, and can be exploited to the writer’s benefit.

 Exercise: What Happens to Childhood Memories?

STAGE ONE

Think back to your childhood. Choose a memory – one that’s fuzzy, rather than one that’s crystal clear in your mind. Recount the incident on paper, just as you remember it. Talk to yourself as you write.... I can’t remember what they said now, but what I can recall is that at the time of listening...

Don’t worry at all about how creatively you write this for the moment – the key thing at this stage of this exercise is accuracy of memory.

Write between 200 and 800 words, then read through what you’ve written and change anything that you now remember more clearly. Take out anything that you feel isn't a true memory.

STAGE TWO

Now rewrite these bald facts as a very short story or extract from an unwritten fiction. Use freewriting. In other words, don’t spend hours working on plot and character. You already have sufficient for the purpose of this set of exercises.

Three useful tips:
• ‘Dip down’ into a specific scene.
• Concentrate on the scene, not the facts surrounding it 
• Let the facts just be your starting point. Have as much fun as you like in making things up. Twist the facts to suit yourself  or stick to them entirely if you wish

 Aim for up to 800 words. STAGE THREE

 Allow several days for the previous exercise to ‘settle’. 

When you’re ready to resume, re-read both the factual account and the ‘mini short story’ and think about how you would fuse the two to create a piece of imaginative non-fiction.

Consider using these elements from the factual account:
• the immediacy of the memories
• your thoughts on those memories as you jotted them down
• the surrounding facts – what you later discovered about the even, perhaps online, or through photographs

Consider using these elements of writing fiction:

Interior monologue • dialogue • scenes • detailed imagery • changes in the actual sequence one events to add tension.

This time, rather than write fiction, as before, create a new piece of imaginative non-fiction that will fill in the ‘fuzzy bits’ that you don’t actually recall from the event. These won’t necessarily be the absolute truth, but will have a sense of truthfulness. Write to any length you prefer.

Exercises like these can help you understand the difference between truth (and truthiness!) and creativity in writing non-fiction It can also help you continue to find your own distinctive writer’s voice.