Emily Dickinson’s proclamation to ‘tell all the truth but tell it slant’, appears to be a suitable mantra for creative freedom when using real events as source material. Fictional works claiming to be ‘based on a true story’ permeate popular culture as well as literary fiction, particularly in the increasingly popular ‘true crime’ genre.
But the genre presents some unique challenges for its authors. ‘Based on a true story’: the claim appears to suggest an authenticity that every author aspires to. However, the term ‘true story’ seems oxymoronic in that the crafting of a story necessitates a process of editing, selecting and crafting which distances the final creation from the truth.
Establishing What Is Meant by ‘Based on a True Story’
To commence on writing a piece ‘based on a true story’ decisions must be made about what or whose truth you will be upholding. There is a difference between factual accuracy and emotional truth. In fiction, the subtitle ‘based on a true story’ gives the cursory illusion of authenticity that belies the layers of artifice beneath the final product. It is a claim which would appear reprehensible to Barthes: ‘Literature never accesses the reality of the real world: the reality effect is merely a further level of artifice.’
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Sign up to our Free Weekly NewsletterThis could suggest that the subtitle ‘based on a true story’ is ever necessary; it signals another level of artifice undermining the attempts of the writer.
Selecting Details to Engage the Reader
Describing his process of writing the seminal true crime novel, ‘In Cold Blood’, Truman Capote described his tale as a ‘truer truth’. “Reflected reality is the essence of reality, the truer truth.” This “truer truth,” Capote continued, had to do with his belief that “all art is composed of selected detail.’
The challenge as a writer is to pursue these threads to produce a truthful tale in a fictional form. Therefore, creating an artefact ‘based on a true story’ has its own merits that elevate it beyond the facts of the case. However, this would now potentially place the piece within the realm of the Baudrillarian hyperreal rather than the real, meaning the claim to be ‘based on a true story’ becomes problematic.
Legal Considerations
While writing Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1982), Marquez made the decision to create new names for real people he was portraying. One of whom later tried to sue the writer. Marquez’s victory in court exemplifies the prevailing attitude to truth in fiction: ‘What matters is the way it presents an object of reality, not reality itself. It’s like a woman who poses for a painter [but] then demands half the copyright. She owns her body but the work itself belongs to the painter’.
Sensitivity to Victims
Professor Whitney Phillips has addressed the potentially ethical issues around writing True Crime stories in her Media Ethics Course. One concern she discusses is that “You have a certain kind of victim, a certain kind of story, a certain kind of perspective,” said Phillips. “And that’s the thing that gets repeated over and over. And because it gets repeated, that’s what people are familiar with.” In other words, despite the claim to be ‘based on a true story’, it is the same stories which audiences are exposed to repeatedly. A more ethical approach may be to highlight and explore stories concerning underrepresented groups.
The Event Has Already Happened
The intrigue of ‘not knowing what happens next’ is an essential ingredient in storytelling. By using real, criminal events as the stimulus, true crime potentially undermines its ability to engage the reader. However, by acknowledging that the work conforms to narrative structure rather than the randomness of a real event, immediately signposts that it is artificial and that the ‘story’ element of ‘based on a true story’ is the most important part of the claim.
A Story May Be More Relatable Than the ‘Truth’
In his recent court case Marquez has been granted greater claim to the reality for the story than the real-life counterparts: ‘Mr. Miguel Reyes Palencia could never have told the story as the writer Gabriel García Márquez did and could never have employed the literary language that was actually used. The work is characterized by its originality.’ This raises again the central tension described by Barthes that ‘Literature never accesses the reality of the real world: the reality effect is merely a further level of artifice.’ Simulation that conveys a greater truth to its reader than the true events themselves.
