"Reality is stranger than fiction." Obviously, duh.
Alright, hear me out. It was just a prompt that my professor gave to the class, and… and it made me think. I couldn't really attempt it well, but I wrote something in the middle that… that just inspired me to write this blog. Because it’s something nobody talks about.
Throughout my life, I’ve heard a lot of people say how reality is stranger than fiction. And, as a writer myself, it kinda worries me. It’s like they’re belittling the art that I’m so passionate about. Like, they just… don't see what I see, y’know.
I mean, it’s kinda dumb, now that I think about it. But I still feel this way. I’m one of the firm believers of art-imitates-life philosophy, so I don't buy it when people say that reality is stranger than fiction. What got you thinking this way?
Have you ever read Dostoyevsky? McCarthy? Or even me? Alright, the last one was a little bit of a stretch—I’m quite literally writing a shonen dark-fantasy web-novel, which is the last thing you can consider realistic. Anyways, you get my point. Prose can be highly realistic when it needs to be, so how can you say that reality is often stranger, when the lines are so blurry? You have never consumed realistic stories?
What I just said is bullshit. I hate to break it to you, but here’s the truth: these guys are right. Reality is stranger than fiction. But there’s some nuances that I wanna rant about.
So, welcome to FictionStudent!
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Writers often find inspiration from instances that have happened in their lives. Most stories are not just stories—they represent the lived experiences of humans who tell them.
Stories can take any form—a novel, a film, or even in art, music. You name it. Advertising uses a lot of storytelling too to get customers, as far as I understand.
Stories are everywhere around us. We’re actually surrounded by stories. We just don't know. Newspapers, ads, Instagram Reels or Tiktoks, any social-media content, blogs—heck, even this blog! And on top of that, we also narrate stories to each other all the time. You might tell your mom how your day at school was, or your spouse how work went. Isn't all of it stories?
That’s what we mean when we say art imitates life. Art comes out of life. Something happens to us, and we just can't keep it in. We have to write about it. And that’s how we write stories.
It was just a prompt that my professor gave me. But it made me think. And it made me realize how art is not just a realistic representation of life, but a highly polished version of it.
Think about your life. Your life is not… just one story. Your life is a bunch of stories running all around you, with you. When you’re yapping to your best-friend about how your class-presentation sucked today, your presentation wasn't the only story.
You were preparing for it for days. Designed the slides with care. Practiced it well. And still got sweaty hands when it mattered.
But, is that the only story that was going on at that point of time? Yeah, it’s the story you write about, or at least narrate to others—but there’s a lot more happening that you just don't add in that story. For example, the coffee today sucked. Or that some professor scolded you for some really silly reason. Or that you had a class today that you hated a little lesser than you usually do.
We don't tell everything that’s happening in our lives when we tell our stories. We just tell the parts that matter to that one particular story.
That’s why I said that art is a highly polished version of life. Life doesn't make any sense on a whole—it’s composed of little fragments that we join and delete and mold together to tell a story which actually makes any sense.
Look throughout your day. Yeah, you designed a presentation today. You took four hours to make it. Then you went for a coffee and it sucked. And then you spent some time with your friends, and went to sleep. That’s reality.
Days later, stuff continued to happen. One thing led to another, and the fragments began to join together. And you messed up the presentation today. You couldn't buy coffee today because you’re low on money. You went to buy eggs.
Our life is just filled with these little fragments that together don't make much sense. But some fragments are like seeds—they grow a stem, and then those stems grow branches. And these branches begin connecting to other branches. Everything expands. Stuff happens. Some fragments begin making sense together. Sometimes, we make the connections ourselves.
So yeah, when you ask me, reality is stranger than fiction. Because fiction isn't supposed to be strange. It’s supposed to be an organized version of life itself.
Life happens. Art is created.
