This morning I received an anonymous message criticizing the short story “Hope Never Frays”, which I co-wrote with Nick and posted last night. I deleted the message and resolved not to directly respond to it. This is what I do with most anonymous critiques. Yes, there is a social networking aspect to Tumblr; yes, we writers encourage feedback and critique — but I won’t engage in such a discussion with someone who can’t even be bothered to reveal at least their Tumblr “face” despite having full access to mine. Such begins an uneven playing field that only tilts further from there.

To summarize, this individual noted that when people try to write about war, they often miss the mark regarding what is realistic; and that our story was completely unrealistic. The message went on to admonish me (us) that a writer trying to play on emotions of real-life events should respect the honesty of those events and not offend those who’ve lived through them.

As I stated previously, I never intended to directly respond to the message, and I won’t. The core of the message, however, raised an issue I’d like to address, so I’m addressing it here, in this way. I’ll leave it to Nick to directly defend the piece, and the research that went into it, if he feels it necessary to do so (given he received the message as well). I will only say, from my side, it was my preliminary research that led to the decision not to peg the story to any particular conflict, place, or time. The astute reader will note no years are ever mentioned, nor is a specific conflict named. This story could just as easily be taking place in 1972 or 1993 or 2010 or 2027. As writers, we cannot be held responsible for the assumptions you make as a reader.

But I do want to touch on this strange belief that a work of fiction must be “realistic.” Of course, different people have different tastes in what they like to read. But these comments rather reminded me of my father. Dad is a voracious reader, and has been for as long as I’ve been alive. He reads primarily history and biographies. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him read more than 3 or 4 novels in my life — and even then, the novels he reads are books like Catch-22. He once told me that, although he’d tried to watch it several times, he could never get through the movie Forrest Gump — that he didn’t like it because it was unrealistic. Of course it’s unrealistic — it’s a work of fiction.

Fiction demands a lot of its readers — more so, in my view, than a non-fiction work. Non-fiction is social science — emphasis on science. A piece of non-fiction includes empirical evidence to back up the author’s theories, depiction, and conclusions. All of this can be recreated by an intrepid or skeptical reader who wishes to retrace the author’s footsteps through pages of footnotes and references and see if the picture presented is fair and accurate. If you believe it is not, you can create your own using the original author’s references.

You don’t have to take a piece of non-fiction at face value, and most scholars would prefer you didn’t. Fiction, on the other hand, provides no such empirical evidence. A story simply asks you to believe. The experts call this willing suspension of disbelief. But I call it trusting the writer unconditionally. And with all due respect to Anonymous, we, as fiction writers, did nothing to detract from our story — you did that all on your own, by not approaching the story with the trust fiction demands.

As fiction writers, we create our own reality. It might bear a passing resemblance to yours. It might remind you of events taking place in your walking world; hell — it might even reference those very real events. But don’t you for a minute mistake our reality for yours when you step into a piece of fiction. As fiction writers, no matter how much research we put into a work, all we really have to offer you is the story. And we give you that story, hold up our hands, and say: “This is what happened. Trust me.”