The Dilemma of Telling the Truth in Fiction

I added to this article 24 Sept 2025 (sw)

Writing true stories is a hard and dicey affair. 

Recently, I experienced a paradoxical rejection of my historical novel (The Wizard Clip Haunting) principally because it features an important aspect of all story telling—paradox. In this case a paradoxical Catholic priest. The renegade (or vice) aspects of this priest's nature are historically documented. At the same time, the heroic (or virtue) aspects of this priest's nature are also historically true. Yet, because the priest plays a central role in the plot of the story, and because he fulfills the critical narrative nature of being human (that is, imperfection, which allows readers to connect with someone like themselves), a few Catholic readers are hesitant to endorse the novel. 

This is nothing new for any writer, especially any historical fiction or non-fiction writer. The problem occurs when the subject of your story touches on the beliefs or ideologies of a social subgroup that clings to those beliefs. It doesn't matter if the subgroup is a religious faith (e.g. Catholicism), a political party, professional organization, or a cadre of social activists. You're sure to upset someone, somehow, sometime...even if you're trying hard to tell the truth.

Although there is something called "objective" truth, to every social subgroup "truth" is relative and "subjective" to a particular worldview. This is what makes telling the truth difficult. 

If you have a character that is morally flawed -- and all characters need to be flawed for the story to connect with audiences -- there will be a subgroup in that audience who will cling to an "ideal" of how a particular character should act. And when your human character, who is part of a subgroup thinks, speaks, or acts in contradiction to the subgroup's ideal, although the character is being true to his human nature, members of the associated subgroup will be offended by what you've written. 

Have you told the truth? To the subgroup you may not have told the truth...about the reader's IDEAL. But you have told the truth about the character's fallible, human character.  The criticism comes because you have not sanitized the subgroup's hero and portrayed he or she as perfect—the central problem of most Christian, so-called "faith films."  My conclusion is that if you were to sanitize the hero and make him or her perfect, you would be lying—a lie historically and a lie about the human condition. 

Thus, writing true stories is a hard and dicey affair.  The best stories that resonate with truth of the human condition do not land solidly in the ideal worldview of good and evil, like the red or black realms of the above Yin-Yang illustration. Rather, the best stories that tell the truth reside on the curved line between the two realms. This thin and chaotic border is where all of humanity exists. The Yin-Yang also illustrates the necessity of mystery and the human soul's quest for perfection—the red and block dots.

Going a Bit Further 

In an early blog post, "Can Historical Fiction Be True?", I described six aspects of telling the truth in fiction.  The second aspect describes how multiple stories of the same event can conflict, simply by the storyteller's different perspective. This touches on the logical fallacy known as AND/OR. where one person may claim that a fact is either A or B, when the truth may actually be A and B.  

While "objective" truth may exist as a heavenly ideal, human "subjective" truth becomes a paradox—an apparent logical contradiction—that through reason can be explained as plausible. As writers of fiction or non-fiction, we all know that successful stories are based on what appears to be a contradiction or great irony. For example,  a man falls in love with a mermaid—something that is logically impossible—but through the skill of storytelling the writer explains how the impossible can be possible, e.g. the hit movie SPASH.  (1984, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Tom  Hanks, Daryl Hannah, John Candy & Eugene Levy.)  SPLASH necessarily lies on the Yin-Yang border or the A&B region. 

Thus, all good writing begins with an ironic premise, because the human condition is inherently ironic. At every moment of every day we all want something...but can't have it—the 2 spheres of the Yin-Yang.  Hope turns to despair, our exhausting effort is always in need of a rewrite, love is lost, and "snakes on a plane." All good stories are about the human condition, which by definition is ironic. The good guy is sometimes fallible, and the villain sometimes noble. 

Back to those social subgroups that cling to beliefs or ideologies—where "belief" is a logically defensible, and "ideology" is a logically indefensible. Depending on the topic, the subgroup, and the perspective, what is a belief to one is an ideology to another. Yes, irony is ubiquitous. 

Truth hurts. It's the human condition to avoid being hurt, to attack those who do the hurting, or at least shun such miscreants.  But while we are driven toward the ideal, it's the paradox that gives life intrigue.

How Fiction Tells the Truth and Non-Fiction Cannot.

Fiction is necessary to convey the truth about the human condition. Fiction allows the writer to examine the heart of his characters. Non-Fiction cannot authentically write about what someone is thinking, unless that thinking is confessed and documented—a memoir  But fiction, especially in a novel, can spend hours inside the value system and thoughts of a character. This occurs when the writer delves into the psychological heart and moral truth of natural law and its effect on the character and plot. In so doing, the character, at the hands of the writer, begins to explore how natural moral law and works—not just in the physical realm (like gravity) but also in the psychological realm (like guilt). 

What is worth underscoring here is that ALL physical action is the consequence of moral decision-making. The outward dissection actions take (what we normally document in non-fiction texts), must first originate in the mind, and what non-fiction cannot access. Thus, what happens in the non-fiction sphere is a metaphor for what happened previously in the mental value sphere, the sphere from which memoirs are written and where only fiction can tread.   

And this is what makes stories so alluring to audiences and readers—they get to peek behind the curtain at the truth of what is really going on .                                                                                                                   

The Philosophical Basis of How Stories Connect with Audiences

"It sort of makes you stop and think, doesn't it?"

Rule No. 1: Audiences connect best with characters when you tell a story that the audience believes is universal, logical, and organic. 

• Universal means the story centers on a universal values that the audience believes are universally true...that means what is right vs. what is wrong.  In 90 minutes you can't change the audience's moral values more than a smidgen, so you better start and end where the audience generally is. You can nudge people, but you can't convert them. If you want to convert people produce a documentary and present the most biased interviews and visuals you can find. But don't figure you can figure which way the conversion will flop. A pro-Trump doc may just turn people against him, as Dinesh D'Souza has probably discovered, and a anti-Trump doc may create more Republican voters...as Michael Moore has discovered. 

• Logical means the story's cause and effect elements are logically consistent with Natural Law. Now, there are two kinds of natural laws. There is physical kind, e.g. gravity, momentum, inertia, etc.; and there are psychological kind, e.g. guilt, generosity, lust, envy, etc.   You violate one and there will be natural consequences to answer to. 

• Organic means the filmmaker's ability to surreptitiously foreshadow events... while still being universal and logical.  

Rule No. 2: Every one of the universal, logical and organic elements consistently conforms to a single Moral Premise Statement:

[some moral vice] leads to [some physical detriment], but

[some moral virtue] leads to [some physical betterment].

To expand: The vice and the virtue in the statement need to be universal values that most everyone in a general audience will understand at some level, e.g. greed vs. generosity, selfishness vs selflessness, arrogance vs. humility, etc.

The detriments and betterments are logically the natural consequences of the vice or virtue. Greed leads to isolation, generosity leads to friendship. In the political arena, arrogance (both Trump and the Acosta) leads to distrust, but humility (Jordan Peterson) leads to respect. 

This is one of my Big Problems — s.w.

Rule No. 3: Avoid parochial content and jargon...unless your audience is parochial and expects you to use jargon. For instance, Christian faith films often lapse into trite visuals, scenes, and jargon, the meaning of which is obscured to the non-believer. Someone asked Jordan Peterson once, "Are you a believer?" Peterson's logical response was, "I believe a lot of things." 

Rule No. 4: Tell the Truth.

Seems simple, but here's what it means.

When you set up a conflict between a flawed character and a universal vice and universal virtue, remember these three things:

1. Things Don't Happen by Accident. Either nature delivers, or your character is motivated by some value. 
2. The Universe is run by the Eternal Purposes of God. Generally, that means Natural Law is benevolent toward humans, unless humans ignore what is benevolently given them.
3. Novel and unexpected events (e.g. a miracle) occur to accomplish the universe's larger purpose. In such an event, it may appear that Natural Law is violated, but to the clever writer the event is always natural. 

How to Change the World at Bedtime - The Art of Storytelling - Didactic vs Narrative

There are many ways of trying to convince someone that something is true. There is the "BOP!" method, frequently employed by our parents and school teachers.

"I'll tell you what you're suppose to believe, and if you don't repeat it faithfully I'll bop you on the head with this here book."

Such is the method currently being used in segments of our political sub-culture. Either you toe the party line or I'll kick you off my Facebook page, out of my store, or the safe zone at the local university. So much for the pursuit of truth through dialogue and tolerance.

Many of us grew up in such fascist environments. But I don't think those who think much, think much of the effectiveness of such methods. In a pedagogical sense we might describe the BOP method with terms like rote, punishment, telling, didactic, or tyrannic. But most of us more likely appreciate learning through personal experience, discovery, experiment, showing, and simulation. Oh, yes, I should add the verbal pedagogies like dialogue, debate, and argument (as long as the arguments are the logical, not the yelling kind).

To those in the communication professions these two styles of communication can be identified simply as "TELLING" or "SHOWING."  Or, I could use more esoteric terms "DIDACTIC" and "NARRATIVE."  Experience is the best teacher, of course, but TELLING a little boy not to touch the hot stove is safer than actually letting him touch it. And yet, telling him may only elicit the question, "Why?" And that's where SHOWING or perhaps a simulation through a story is better.

Jeremy, you're too young to remember, but one time your Auntie Francine touched the stove when it was turned on, and her hand went up in flames. She screamed and hollered, and cried so hard. We took her hand and put it on ice, but that was so cold she cried even harder. Then the doctor came and took her hand completely off her arm and kept it a bandage for 2 months way up there on the shelf, and she couldn't reach it, or use it, even to pick her nose. How would you like that? Wouldn't it be sad if you couldn't pick your nose?"

Stories are like simulations if you can get your audience to emotionally identify with your protagonist and internally make decisions for the protagonist as the story goes along. There are many techniques for getting your audience to identify with the characters in a story...but we have not the space in this blog. See the on-line training. Yet, when you do it right, your audience will make the transition to believe that THEY are IN the story, and that THEY can HELP the protagonist toward the goal.

Oh, Daisy, don't open that door, there's a monster on the other side and he might eat you and it would really be ugly and I don't want to see that.

But of course, Daisy, being immortalized on the celluloid, can't hear you, so she walks through the door and is eaten by the monster. Blood everywhere. Quit memorable. Next time she'll listen. Oh, right, there won't be a next time. But the "Daisys" in the audience who are living through the simulation WILL remember...which is the point.

[Where does preaching fall into the above lists? Well, it depends on whether the preaching primarily involves didactic or narrative techniques. A good rule of thumb based on research of best selling books is 75% narrative and 25% didactic. Hook the heart, imagination and memory with the story, and then sum up the message with a short didactic explanation. Now, I've heard preachers who will a tell a story that has nothing to do with their message...which only hinders and create cognitive dissonance. The assumption is that that story embodies the applicable moral premise. ]

What Happens When We Tell Stories

I so much want to tell a story here, but your time is valuable. So let me NOT practice what I'm trying to preach and just share with you (e.g. tell you) what happens when you rightly use a story to communicate a particular truth, assuming you're using the Audience Identification Techniques described below.

When you tell a story correctly your audience will:

• Work mentally to fill in the narrative gaps, and figure out what is going on and why. (Narrative communication is inductive. It provides information but the audience has to figure out the premise that holds it all together. That "figuring it out" requires mental engagement.)
• Follow the narrative hook created by the story and try to answer the "story question." Listening to narrative communication is thus very active and engaging.
• Identify with the flawed character, because they (the audience) are flawed.
• Be intrigued about how the protagonist will successfully achieve his/her goal.
• Be held in suspense as the protagonist overcomes obstacles.
• Root for the protagonist at turning points to make the right decision and progress.
• Be sad when the protagonist makes the wrong decision and falls back.
• See themselves in the protagonist's journey.
• Learn with the protagonist what to do and what not to do to have a good life themselves.
• Subliminally recognize the moral truth, even though the outward story may be fictional.
• Ride the emotional roller coaster of the story's ups and downs. This creates adrenalin rushes that burn memories into the brain. 
• Remember the story and its subliminal message because it's visual and a simulation of a life experience. 

Now granted, I'm short-handing a lot of theory and practice here, but perhaps this blog will encourage you to learn how to tell better stories and change the world. ...Now, onward and upward!

What Happens With Didactic Communication

Let me contrast Didactics with Narratives. Unfortunately this will be a lot of propositional pronouncements...the very thing I'm preaching against:

• Didactic communication tugs on the brain. Narrative stories, properly told, tug on the heart.
• Didactic communication involves precisely defined propositional statements, logic, and syllogisms -- (think theology). Narrative communication involves suspense, intrigue, irony, conflict, and metaphors (think bedtime stories).
• Didactics use abstract formulas that pertain to all time, all places and all persons. They are thus impersonal and objective. Narratives pertain to one time, one place, one person and are thus personal and subjective. 
• Didactics make intellectual connections but generally produce no adrenaline rush to burn-in memories. Narratives make emotional connections by producing adrenaline rushes that do burn-in memories.
• Didactics are void of emotional cantharis and are easily forgotten. Narratives, properly told, lead to emotional catharsis and are easily remembered.
• Didactics frequently require rhetorical embellishment (volume, gestures, and pacing)  to keep an audience awake. Narratives can benefit from rhetorical techniques but don't require it. The audience's imagination supplies the embellishment to keep tuned. 
• Didactics require deductive thinking where the conclusion is pronounced up front by the presenter and assumed to be true. Narratives require inductive thinking where the conclusion is derived by the audience through assimilation of the character's experiences. Thus, the conclusion is owned by the audience, not the presenter, and is thus remembered longer.
• Didactics offer theoretical and general descriptions of life leading to the embrace of ideologies that may not  have practical meaning to the audience. Narratives offer visceral and specific portrays of life leading to personal verisimilitude. 
• Didactics treat "cause and effect" intellectually and philosophically. Narrative treat "cause and effect" emotionally and practically.
• Didactics explains truth. Narrative imbues truth.
• Didactics tell audiences what to think, so they leave believing, "It's the presenter's idea, I'm skeptical." Narrative leads audiences to discover for themselves, so they leave believing, "It's my idea. Ah-ha!"

Audience Identification Techniques - How to Tell a Story That Connects with Your Audience

There are numerous ways to get your audience to emotionally identify with your characters and thus learn through your character's successes and failures how to make their lives better, which is the subliminal reason people loves stories...they're like safe simulations of life that teach what is good, true, and beautiful.  But there are "catches" to telling successful stories. Here are some of them. They apply to short and long form stories. If you learn more about these and use them, you'll connect with your audience and they'll learn what you're trying to teach them through the experiences of your characters.

• Imbue in your story a true and consistently applied moral premise. This means that the underlying moral truth of your story must not conflict with Natural Law, although the outward physical story may be a fairytale.  This is the definition of a myth—a story vehicle, which may be true or fictional, but nonetheless communicates a universal moral truth. Much of my book, "The Moral Premise," the on-line "Storycraft Training," and this blog is about this.
• Start with a strong, ironic physical hook.  e.g. your protagonist's goal is out of his or her league and sounds impossible to achieve.
• Articulate an engaging log line. There is a good blog post on this.
• Be sure the conflict of inner values is universal to your audience and not parochial. (That is, don't beg your message and assume something is true your audience may think is false.)
• Your hero or protagonist must be flawed but wanting to be better.
• Your hero must pursue a physical and visible goal that may metaphor a deep moral goal.
• Your hero must be passionate and active, not passive or slothful.
• Structure your story's emotional ups and downs so that there is a regular emotional roller coaster with ever increasing risks. Using the technique in the Moral Premise book, the Storycraft Training, and this blog you can learn that every other scene or sentence must be an ironic, nearly impossible journey for your hero.

Well, there is more!!!  ...and if you're familiar with all of this stuff, you will have recognized this last list as some of the "Secrets of Successful Story Structure" from my free bookmark.

How to Emotionally Connect a Protagonist to Your Audience.

 This is an updated post from 2010.

Our full house at EXTRAORDINARY's premiere

A  recent workshop attendee who works with teen filmmakers asked this question:

What are the major events in a story that a protagonist must face and overcome to make sure the audience emotionally connects with the character?

That question tells me the filmmakers believe it's the external (or visible) story EVENTS or ACTIONS that connect the audience to the character. But that's only half the truth.

The action a character takes is valued by the audience only because of said character's motivation to take said action. If the protagonist kills another character, the event will be judged differently by the audience depending on whether the killing is pre-meditated murder or self-defense. That is, what's important to the audience is WHY the character took said action. And that is all about who the character is internally. It's the character's internal values that mostly dictate the emotional connection of the audience.

The way the audience discovers those values is the work of the plot and how the character responds to the beats of the plot. More about the plot beats below, but first let's look at how the audience will come to recognize the character's internal values. This is how it works in real life, too.

This diagram from a workshop I give will help. On the left side of the circle, items 2, 3 and 4 happen internally to a character. In a motion picture the audience does not see these unless the character shares his thinking with another character. In a novel, internal monologue often supplies these points.  But everything on the right side of the circle, items 1, 5, and 6 are in the visible, physical realm which the audience sees.

So, let's begin with No. 1. Here our character observes a situation in the external world.

2. Almost immediately the character compares what he observes to his own value system.

3. Let's assume that there is an internal value conflict between what he observes and his own value system. That leads to:

4. The character deciding upon a course of action to remediate the situation, and try to change the external situation to be more in line with his own internal values.

5. The character's thoughts morph into the physical realm and he takes some action.

6. As a direct consequence of the action some natural consequence occurs that is totally outside the character's control. Nature has the upper hand now, and some physical conflict may occur.  This physical conflict is a metaphor of the internal conflict from step 3.

And the cycle repeats itself, as the character...

1. Observes the new situation created by his intervening action, and

2. Evaluates....

If the Natural Consequence is evaluated as good in the character's mind, then his original internal value is reinforced. If the Natural Consequence is evaluated as bad, then the character may revisit and revise their original internal value....and transform.

TURNING  POINTS AND BEATS

Now this sort of logic appears most dramatically at a story's TURNING POINT or at Major Beats of a story. I discuss these beats in various places in this blog. But here's a starting point: 13 Major Beats.

So, this goes back to the original question.

What are the major events in a story that a protagonist must face and overcome to make sure the audience emotionally connects with the character?

The answer in an external sense are the dramatic story beats reflected in the 13 Major Beats link above. But the key to those beats emotionally connecting with audiences all depends on whether or not the internal value arc of the character's transformation coincides with or diverges from the audience's values.

And that is where the Moral Premise comes in. The decisions and actions that the character makes, if you're going to have a successful story, must all coincide with the moral and physical arc described by the moral premise statement, which we are assuming is true and in compliance with Natural Law.