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The article is subjective and expresses the personal opinion of the author.
Is it okay to embellish to tell a better story?
If you are a storyteller? Absolutely. (Journalists and politicians are another matter…)
We all prefer straight truth. Unfortunately, unaltered truth usually doesn’t make for the best stories.
Stories are the purest truth we have.
And make no mistake – our job is to tell good stories; not necessarily 100% accurate ones ones. Our mandate is to affect the reader emotionally. To teach, to entertain.
Sometimes, regurgitating exactly what happened is a detriment to those goals.
Real life is messy. It isn’t so much “happily ever after” as it is just “after”. It can be hard to draw conclusions when the band keeps playing on – we are all only works in progress anyway.
By contrast, stories are finite. They have a beginning, a middle, and (most crucially) an end. They adhere to a form – setup, escalation, resolution.
I realize this is dangerously thin ice I am easing out onto, and I am not advocating for the abandonment of truth in favor of convenient story lies. Quite the opposite.
Stories are the purest truth we have. They are the universal human language, predating civilization itself. That the caveman killed the saber-tooth tiger doesn't matter as much as the dangers he enumerated in the retelling.
We even have a modern model of this practice.
Long before our current troubles with fake news, alternative facts, and other such doublespeak, Hollywood had been tweaking facts to suit their dramatic purposes.
Movies “based on a true story”, or its flimsy cousin, those “inspired by a true story”. These stories often bear little resemblance to real events, but we love them anyway because they blur the line between the possible and the impossible.
They also greatly exaggerate details. Minimally, they spice up the narrative in pursuit of drama. More egregious examples use reality as the loosest of starting points.
Left: in the 2006 film ‘Invincible’, Vince Papale returns a fumble forty yards for a touchdown. Right: in real-life, Papale scooped up the football at the five yard line. Images: Walt Disney Pictures
Changing the real story for dramatic purposes may feel like a license to run roughshod over what really happened, but doing so is usually necessary to tell a satisfying story.
Hollywood will change the real story by: streamlining the narrative into something that can fit into the medium; succinctly delineating theme; creating a single character to serve as an amalgamation of several people; establishing a through line that follows patterns of escalation; and resolving satisfactorily.
All of that is necessary story building, the sort of narrative scaffolding without which the entire thing would collapse. But the biggest reason is the one around which all stories turn.
Conflict.
Stories are above all about people in conflict. Sometimes you need to draw that conflict into sharper focus by paring back ancillary events or people, or by re-staging events so that the story’s progression is more satisfying.
The Titanic really did sink, though there is no record of Jack or Rose. They were invented from whole cloth as a way to humanize the tragedy and make viewers empathize with their plight.
The Exorcist is eminently about the forces of good and evil in this world, and the very squishy humans caught in between. Whether or not such events actually transpired is immaterial to the story’s purposes: entertainment, yes (this is Hollywood after all), but also a cautionary tale, in the vein of ghost stories told by campfire.
After all, horror stories are only the latest variation of deadly hazards told around the fire by our ancient ancestors.
Whether or not the events actually transpired as shown, they involved a boy. The film gender swapped because nothing is creepier than demonic little girls. Image: Warner Bros
TV’s The Goldbergs is only loosely inspired by Adam Goldberg’s real childhood. It exists in a nebulous never-been (affectionately called 1980-something) that is only moored to reality by the loosest of threads, but it works because those threads are achingly human.
The show’s singular joy is found in Adam’s old home movies (shown during the epilogue) wherein the episode’s inspiration is revealed. The events didn’t happen exactly as depicted (or maybe not at all), but we are charmed because the show’s foundation is based on the love of family and the innocence of childhood.
Is it more important that a story is 100% factually correct, or that it inspires?
Does it really matter if Chris Gardner got the stock broker job exactly as shown in The Pursuit of Happyness? Or is the story’s importance in the way it makes us feel? The soar of joy and mingled relief. The swell of hope that stirs even now as I recall the scene.
We, too, have the power to change the course of our lives.
Just as importantly, our stories have the ability to inspire. If we write them correctly.
Application
I appreciate that embellishing may be a controversial suggestion. Likely you are feeling a little icky at the idea of publishing a story merely inspired by truth. Isn’t embellishment just a lie masquerading in formal dress?
I totally get it – just writing this article has been difficult. But you are probably already doing this; isn’t an essay just a remembrance cast in a certain light, crafted to arrive at a desired effect?
Our job is to communicate clearly, and to entertain or educate. To do that, we often choose to leave out certain details while emphasizing others. I’d bet you are already doing this, intentionally or not.
We all know someone who exaggerates ceaselessly. He didn’t just catch a fish, it was a 40-inch walleye that nearly dragged him overboard. Her boss is such a tightwad, he makes employees fill out a form to request a new pencil — which made getting that raise all the more impressive.
You may not be so obvious in your embellishment (I should hope not!), but I guarantee you put on a little extra polish when you recount an event or experience. We can’t help it.
What are we doing in these cases? Casting ourselves in the best light, yes. But also, and more importantly, we are elevating the stakes. Why?
Stories are about conflict.
Even non-storytellers understand this intrinsically.
Our stories may have more reality in them than Hollywood’s, but we both are ultimately doing the same thing. We are searching for conflict and honing its edge. Any other embellishments — inciting incidents, escalation, resolution — is just good storytelling.
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