I sent the writing challenge below out to my Wednesday Writers Café writing group this week, and decided to share it with you too. Any takers? Please post your story or poetic prose on your blog within the next couple weeks and put your piece’s title and the post link into the comments below so we can find it. You may link the prompt image or capture it to post with your writing challenge response. Enjoy!
I’ll post mine next week.
Non-fiction generally works to illuminate and clarify facts or circumstances in reality, where fiction could be considered a reflection of reality defined and embellished by imagination.
I believe fiction writers work to clarify images rather than facts and to focus on mood, ideas, feelings, atmosphere, and perhaps alternate forms of scene/worlds and characters. But I also believe effective fiction is well rooted in our reality. It carries suggestions of things we know and a flow we understand, so we’re able to step into the alternate world of feelings and imagination and belong within the story – or at least alongside it seamlessly.
What do you think is the difference between the two forms? What do you focus on when you write fiction? Why?
Below are two versions of the same photograph. The first is non-fiction (except for interpretation of the photographic capture). The second is flipped upside down (and cropped for emphasis) to allow us to access the reflection as the prime ‘reality’ and see our usual view of reality as the root or base.
Writing Challenge:
Using the flipped photograph below as inspiration, do a fiction free-write entering into the reflected world. Imagine ‘entering into’ on any level and in any way you like. OR Take any setting or moment and turn it over in your mind to enter into it in a new way.
I look forward to seeing what you post on your blogs. Don’t forget to come back to this post to give us the title and link to find them. Happy Writing!
Reality With a Twist ~ Books 
Here’s the title and link of my response to this prompt: Weaving Solace https://realitywithatwistbooks.wordpress.com/2023/03/10/weaving-solace/
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That’s a cool challenge, Sheri. And I like your take on the difference between reality and fiction, as well as how they’re connected. I look forward to reading the results! I might give this one a try, but no promises as I’ve started a new WIP. You know how that goes!
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I definitely know how that goes. Sometimes a short free write outside of WIP world can be inspirational to get the creative brain flowing. For me this one was cathartic and felt like a wonderfully limbering stretch. But sometimes it’s just a distraction. I always enjoy your responses to prompts, but I won’t hold my breath. 😀 Hopefully someone will post one besides me, for your reading pleasure. Have a great week, Diana!
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Ha! No don’t hold your breath. I need to do some time slowing exercises before I trip over myself. 🙂
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Hugs! Take care of you. ❤
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I write fiction to find, experience, and recreate the emotional truth of my characters’ lives.
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I like that expression, ’emotional truth,’ regarding fictional characters. It’s the type of tie to reality that I was contemplating. My stories are character-driven as well. I feel I know them when I begin the story, but I can relate to the journey of discovering and experiencing their emotions through the action and their reactions during the process of writing. I’m not sure I understand what you mean by ‘recreate’ since my characters are new to me and haven’t had existence until I begin writing. But I suppose I each character embodies recreation of emotional truths I have experienced or observed in life. Is that what you are referring to? Or do you see it differently?
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What I meant was I need to recreate the emotional truth of the characters for the reader after I’ve experienced it myself.
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Ah yes, I follow you now. Agreed!
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