Do you think it is possible to keep fiction from fact?

Question

Based on a unknown source susanna moodie's writing style is tended to compound with fact and fiction scince some of her life story is written in third person as a novel, leading one to suspect that the line between fact and fiction in her mind and her writings was perhaps not properly drawn.

Answer 1

read dan brown's books ( da vinci code, Angels & demons etc.)
he blends facts with fiction so nice that you believe what you read. even the people concerned (in his case, the vatican, the secret cults he mentions etc. start responding to his novels. there is more written in response to his novel than the novel it self !!

Answer 2

It is possible to keep fiction & fact separate. If a bk is entirely factual, it is nonfiction. If it has ANY fiction in the bk, it is 'fiction.'
There are bks that mix the two, like historical fiction for example. That will definitely still be 'fiction' even though there is still much or some fact to it.
The recent media frenzy over the bk. 'A Million Pieces' shows how important it is that 'nonfiction' bks be PURELY factual. 'Fiction' bks do not have to be so scrupulous about keeping to the truth: they can be made up, & that's ok because after all, its fiction. No one gets deceived that way.

Answer 3

All too often, it's not done. A bad example is Michael Bellesiles' "Arming America". He was a History professor at Emory U in Atlanta. I first heard about the book in a five page interview with Bellesiles in "Playboy" mag. I could tell he was a fraud from that and pathetically ignorant about guns. Later, he was caught faking research for the book. He was stripped of awards he had for it, and the publisher dropped it. He resigned. What a scandal! There have been other books of fiction pretending to be fact.

Answer 4

It's difficult, but not impossible. Remember fiction is based on fact.