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Fiction Corner

Alison Hawke

Facts in Fiction

If I was reading a story set in England where a character took a direct train from Ipswich, Suffolk, to Guildford, Surrey, I wouldn't be very impressed. Why? Because there isn't a direct line between the two. You have to go via London, dragging heavy bags and cases across two lines of the London Underground (say, Northern and Circle lines) from Liverpool Street station to Waterloo. Trust me.

I almost said Northern and Central lines there. According to my credit card sized map of the central London Underground system, Northern and Circle is the route I used to take. I wasn't sure, and I wanted to get it right. I've been across central London on the Underground enough times to start getting my lines crossed, as it were.

Putting facts into your fiction has the same effect as wrapping a rumour in a truth. The truth validates the fiction just by being there. With rumours, that's a lousy thing to have happen, with fiction it's great!

Fact is a double-edged blade: get it right and it works for you, get it wrong and it slices into your credibility. Bill Bryson wrote a book called Notes from a Small Island, written as he was taking a farewell tour on Britain before returning to live in America. Some of the most interesting parts of that book to me were his views of places I know. I wanted to see if he'd got it right, if he'd noticed the same things I did, what he saw that I didn't. His piece on the Pleasure Gardens in Bournemouth was spot on because I could recognise what he was talking about. It's an excellent book if you don't mind snorting with laughter while reading.

Thomas Hardy used fact in his fiction by stealth. His novels took place in the fictional English county of Wessex, which bears a striking resemblance to the real-life county of Dorset. Hardy used the structures of Dorset towns but covered them with the fiction of Wessex. It was a cunning ploy, because he could pass off errors in comparing Wessex to Dorset as artistic license. Casterbridge (from The Mayor of Casterbridge) is based on the real-world city of Dochester.

Use of fact is on my mind because I want to base my novel in Guildford, the town I lived and studied in for five years. My knowledge of the place is about two years out of date and I'm wondering how much artistic license I should use. Somehow I have to slot a mental hospital from two hundred miles away (no, I was just visiting) into Guildford, or a town close by. I do have experience of the main places I want to use: a small town by the sea, some open heath ground, an office building and of course that mental hospital.

But I'm wondering if truth is stranger than fiction. Would you believe me if I described a Victorian sanatorium, complete with bars on doors and windows, expansive grounds and cell-like rooms? The main entrance looked like a hotel lobby, red and gold furnishings and plush carpet, but as you went deeper in you found white concrete walls, or nasty green paint. I could make the place up, but I don't think I could come up with anything better. Our personal experiences are just waiting to be mined for nuggets we can use in stories. More on that next month. See you then.