Fiction Vs Non Fiction

Whether you are more of the ‘Frankenstein’ kind or simply swear by ‘The Confessions Of St. Augustine’, choosing between fact and fiction is never an easy task and any literary connoisseur or a book lover would testify to that. On one hand, you have the grandiloquence of imagination, and on the other, the power of verity. The beauty of fiction lies in the fact that with little ingenuity and loads of inspiration one can whip up fascinating premises and incredible plots, just in a stroke of an imagination. Nonfiction on the other hand is very straightforward and bets on factual details and authentic characters and events. In nonfiction, you do not really have to slog your wits to come up with extraordinary anecdotes or fascinating fibs to impress your readers, just a little research and plenty of facts and you are good to go. If you are torn between the battle of fact and fiction, then reading the following article on fiction versus nonfiction will leave you with a fair choice. Read on to know more on this.

Difference Between Fiction And Non-Fiction

Fiction is stranger than nonfiction, as some literary cognoscenti would say you, but that is because nonfiction is confined to possibilities which fiction is not. Probably the best way to define this would be to quote the famous line by Gabriel Garcia Marquez- “Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale”. Fiction is all about fantasy, a make-believe macrocosm crammed with imaginary beings, things, people and events. Non-fiction, on the other hand, concerns itself with factual details, events, people and things.
A work of fiction purely concerns itself with an imaginary plot, unreal characters, and implausible climax, which seems to elude every other work of non-fiction. Fiction is fun, engaging and entertaining, whereas nonfiction is factual, informative and educational. A work of fiction is always set on imaginary grounds, whereas a work of nonfiction is always modeled on real life events, actions, and deals with real life characters and incidents that occurred in the past or present.
Another key difference between a work of fiction and that of nonfiction is their style of writing. While fiction purely bets on crafty imagination and interesting fibs to evoke awe and wonder and are more often than not elaborate, evocative and farfetched in nature, nonfiction pieces of writing are more fact-based writings that draw inspiration from factual details and are more concise, simple and straightforward to sum up.
A fiction writer creates a web of fascinating plots and forges interesting details to captivate his audience and transport them to another time and world. He can cook up details and whip up fascinating accounts without having to sound genuine. However, a nonfiction writer cannot enjoy such liberties and cannot leave his work to the readers’ imagination or interpretation. He cannot transcend the real world of factual details or go overboard with his imagination.
Non-fiction is more prosaic in nature and often includes topics that are universally germane. Fiction, on the other hand, is more symbolic in nature and concerns creative part of writing. It intertwines non-fiction details with existing facts to create an aura of plausibility. Novels, films, short stories are work of fictions based on invented storyline whereas autobiographies, history books and journals are fact-based memoirs.

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