Dawn of a New (Fictional) Era

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The Truth about Truth in Fiction

Hi friends! I’m back! And so are the voiceovers! Whoooo!

For the past few weeks, I’ve been contemplating how to move Macy Sees The World forward in a way that will be both valuable and appealing to people given my capacity as a writer.

Since the newsletter’s inception, I’ve mostly shared personal stories and musings from my travels.

I document the events I experience, sprinkle in researched facts when appropriate, and comment on my analysis of it all with the hope of unearthing some nugget of truth that could help you gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for your life and the world we share.

However, I’ve always felt like these personal stories and musings aren’t the only types of writing I have to share.

While it’s true that you can explore truth and write descriptive stories in personal essays, the creativity of this type of content is limited to the facts.

This limitation of fabrication frustrates me at times because I know I have more to offer you by portraying the places I visit and the things I learn from my travels through the lens of fiction.

As Earnest Hemingway said, “A writer’s job is to tell the truth. His standard of fidelity to the truth should be so high that his invention, out of his experience, should produce a truer account than anything factual can be.”

In other words, fiction is often better at representing reality than a basic recitation of the facts. Whereas facts are interested in capturing a one-dimensional view of reality, fiction has greater potential for capturing a more nuanced—and thus, you can argue—a more faithful view of reality.

Real-Life Impact of Fiction

To me, one of the most magical things about being human is our infinite imagination, our ability to cobble together images, sounds, feelings, places, ideas, and basically any minutiae of experience or knowledge to create imaginary stories that have real-life impacts.

I love fiction for its ability to help us empathetically encounter truth from fresh angles. I think the reason why it’s able to evoke a more visceral response compared to nonfiction is because it centers truth around relatable humans dealing with relatable challenges.

You might not necessarily be able to picture yourself in their exact circumstances. Still, I guarantee you have felt the same desires and struggles as them: desire for freedom, desire for self-discovery, desire to spend time with loved ones.

Transposing these desires and struggles onto new circumstances forces you to encounter “familiar, common things in an odd, unorthodox way.” This in effect causes you “to question [your] perception of reality and, as a result, ultimately redefine it.”

In one study, psychologists assigned one group of people to read an excerpt from the novel Saffron Dreams, in which a young Muslim woman in New York suffers a racist attack, and another group to read a synopsis of the excerpt, without the evocative prose and dialogue.

They found that those who read the fictional account showed less negative bias towards people of different races and ethnicities compared to the synopsis group.

The reason why fiction can have such a salient effect on your perception is simple. To truly immerse yourself in a story, you have to inhabit the characters’ minds, see things from their perspective, and relate to them as if they are real humans, not just an unfeeling figment of your imagination.

As you get to know them, the divide between your lives thins and it becomes easier for you to feel for them as if you are directly experiencing the triumphs and pains of these characters.

Traveling Through Fiction

But fiction isn’t limited to conveying truth. It’s also a powerful vehicle for transporting you to new places and allowing you to experience it in a more memorable, more soul-stirring way.

By experiencing a place through the eyes of fictional characters, you develop an emotional attachment to that place in a way that you can’t through nonfiction.

For example, think about Kings Cross station. Anybody who has read Harry Potter automatically associates this place with the nervous excitement you feel at the start of a new Hogwarts school year.

What was just an ordinary train station has been transformed into a symbol of the Wizarding World and of childhood wonder.

I doubt reading an in-depth article on the history and importance of the station would produce even a fraction of the emotional effect of reading Harry Potter.

Enjoying fiction is ultimately an exercise in empathy. It’s also a means for self-exploration as much as it is a means for exploring the lives of individuals who might be entirely different from you.

As George R. R. Martin put it in A Dance with Dragons, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies…The man who never reads lives only one.”

Moving Forward

So, how is this going to work?

From now on, most of the content of this newsletter will be short stories or serialized fiction inspired by my travels. This could include fiction that dramatizes a local legend, a series of short stories on the founding of a well-known city, or stories that investigate questions such as “what if modern-day New York was (fill in the blank)”.

Next week, I’ll share a few short vignettes capturing the most poignant moments from my trip this summer to wrap up the China Travel Log series. After that, we’ll begin our foray into the realm of fiction.

The boundless possibilities this new direction will open up give me chills, and I can’t wait for us to explore them together.

Ultimately, I want to give you stories that resonate with you on an emotional, spiritual, and intellectual level while helping you experience a place, culture, or historical period through fresh lens.

While I can’t promise that this format will be everyone’s cup of tea, I do promise to write genuinely and with heart. Because this is the only type of writing I am able to create.

I really, really mean it when I say thank you for being here, for reading (or listening) to Macy Sees The World. As someone who’s still figuring out everything on the go, your support means so much to me, and I just want to let you know how important your presence is to the life of this newsletter.

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