You may have heard the saying: “Truth is stranger than fiction.” People sometimes will more readily accept a lie over the truth. How does that happen? Because the lie seems more believable. Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, your story has value only if it is scene rings true to life.
The best fiction stories present a fantasy that can’t be distinguished from the truth. The best nonfiction stories present something unbelievable and show convincing evidence that it must be true.
With fiction you can easily create a pseudo reality that makes perfect sense. Nonfiction can be more challenging when the truth seems too good, too miraculous, or too coincidental to be true. Readers won’t believe you and your valuable message will be lost.
Consider this story: A man sat at a table with a double-six set of dominoes scattered face down. With the intention of turning up only the doubles, he randomly picked seven dominoes. As each one was chosen, he turned the domino face up. All were all doubles.
Odds are, if you tried that a million times, it wouldn’t come close to happening. Suppose it really did happen, and you wanted to convince your readers. Saying, “This really happened,” wouldn’t be good enough.
To make the story believable, you would need to give more details. Who did this? Where was he? What were the circumstances? Why did he even try? Which double came first? Did he shuffle the dominoes before choosing again? How did he feel when the last domino was chosen and turned face up? Maybe an eyewitness said, “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
Imagine your audience being skeptical, refusing to be convinced without conclusive evidence. Then give sufficient details to make the story true to life. Then, your readers will experience the miracle and have no choice but to believe.
