Historical Fiction or Faction?

Using a film as an example - Der Untegang (the Downfall). The entire story, with the exception of the characters outside the bunker, are all real, historical characters, and all the events are, as far as we know, real. The ending is fictitious (showing Traudl Junge escaping on a bicycle, when in reality, she was eventually captured by the Soviets). That film was 99% historical with only a few fictional elements.

On the other hand, you have George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman novels. They depict entirely real historical events but put Flashman (usually unwittingly) at the centre of them.

I'd call the second faction, but I'm not entirely sure what the first is. It's really a dramatisation, but isn't that what a non-fiction novel is?

 

I think I take more issue with the term Non-fiction novel than I do the term Faction. A novel should, by definition, be fiction!

 

So what should we call the non-fiction equivalent of a novel?

 

Yeah. Really.

 

...erm ...fiction? It's either true (non-fiction) or it's not.

Wikipedia basic definition of a novel:


Defining the genre
A novel is a long, fictional narrative which describes intimate human experiences.

But hey. This is one of those topics, isn't it?

 

I guess you would call it faction. But, like others, I take issue with the whole idea of a nonfiction novel. I'm sure people can post links with examples, but if I were to tell my publisher I was working on a nonfiction novel, I'm pretty sure that would be the end of our talks.

 

Probably just a book? Documentation of an event? Documents? Records?

Is there a specialised term for non-fiction texts that's novel-length, actually? (please no one say non-fiction novel) You know, in the same way that a novel is a piece of fiction of considerable length.

 

But if you had a non fiction work told in the style of a novel, then I'd argue that it would be a non-fiction novel. It would be different than faction because of the lack of fiction and it would be different than non fiction because of narrative styles and if you asked a non-writer what a novel is, chances are they'd say it's a book about yeah long. Evolution of language, popular usage, etc.

 

Right. My brain just went wheeee I give up. I'll go eat my asparagus now.

 

A novel is fiction by definition. There are several styles of nonfiction including narrative or memoir, but that doesn't make those works a novel.

If you query an agent or an editor and say you have a fiction novel, you're going to look stupid. Same if you say you have a nonfiction novel. You guys can call things whatever you want, but that doesn't mean the terminology is going to be right or accepted by the publishing world.

And just so everyone knows, there is no hyphen in the word nonfiction.

 

My agent honestly didn't care what words we used in conversation as long as we were communicating effectively and the meaning was unambiguous.

"Hey Katt, it's Brian, just calling to let you know you're cheques in the mail. You have anything else you're working on I might be interested in?
"I've been working on a novel. Non-fiction about the Chicago Molasses Catastrophe of 1919."
"Nope! No fucking such thing Katt. NO FUCKING SUCH THING! NOVELS ARE FICTITIOUS BY THEIR VERY DEFINITION!!1!"
"So what would you call it?"
"A novel length non-fiction account."
"S'même fucking chose, isn't it."
"Yes, but my way is industry standard."


ETA: nonfiction versus non-fiction is a regional debate and actually varies depending on the the words function in a sentence.

 

‘You’re cheques in the mail.’

Heh heh you’re fikk

 

Something written that was truly a ‘fiction’ would - by the definition -be entirely nonsensical, or incomprehensible at least to anybody but the writer. There would not be a single resonance in any one clause...in layman speak ‘it would all be shit...’

I worked that out...

[still working on this theory for my navel]

 

No, no. I was literally several bills of exchange being posted. The grammar's legit and most certainly wasn't a product of dyslexia and auto-correct.

 

Actually, your last point might be one of those things that goes one way on one side of the Pond and a different way on the other. I've lived on each side for nearly an equal amount of time, and I can certainly get mixed up.

But....

Waterstone's is one of the largest (I suspect THE largest) bookstores/booksellers in the UK, and their own website hyphenates non-fiction. https://www.waterstones.com/non-fiction-books

 

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

That's an example of Faction literature^

Faction Definition – What’s the best definition for the faction fiction genre? Books in the faction genre are made up of stories based on a historical figure or events that are woven together with fictitious elements. This genre, more than any of the fiction historical genres, pushes the limits of what is a real historical event or personal and what is not. The line between the truth and what is fiction is extremely blurred in this genre; it tends to confuse people as to what is true historical information and what is not.

 

I think we are splitting hairs here. Fiction specifically means that the main elements of the story are made up, and never happened. They may occur in an historical matrix of actual events, but the main story line is from the author's imagination. In the case of Maureen MacCollough's First Man in Rome series, almost all the characters are real, set in actual historical events, but their dialogue, motivations and detailed interactions are largely the author's imagination, so it is also fiction. My book The Eagle and the Dragon is loosely modeled on an actual Roman mission to China which went by sea in 166AD, and was the inspiration for starting me on that writing journey 25 years ago. However the first mission is lost to us, so I recreated one that is as plausible as I could make it. It turns out there is just the sketchiest account of that first mission, a few sentences from Chinese sources, indicating they arrived in the winter of 100AD bearing gifts; however, I did not find that source until I had already finished my fictional mission arriving in a snowstorm in December of 100AD with 120 pounds of gold. My account is fiction, and my characters are fiction, though they interact with many actual historical figures, such as Emperor He of China.

This is not limited to historical fiction. If you are writing contemporary fiction set in an actual place, then you may include actual details of people and places in the area, or include some fictional ones as well. If you are writing near-term science fiction, such as Martian, you might be well-advised to research the science and technology of your setting as accurately as possible, to make sure your story is as plausible as possible.

Being factual in the setting, which is what we are discussing, doesn't alter the fact that the story itself is fiction. And in any event "faction" already has a meaning, a group of partisans et. al., so misusing it to describe fiction that is very fact-based does not seem to me to convey any meaning. And in fact, I find it hard to conceive of any historical fiction that is NOT based around a matrix of actual historical events, peoples and places. Even if you are writing about cavemen, you should be writing that story including what little we know of their lifestyles and technologies, the climate and animals of the time of which you are writing.