Ethics

In my personal history class we read a chapter about the ethics of writing a memoir and my post today is supposed to be about that, so here we go!

I think that when you're writing something that you're going to call non-fiction you should of course make it as honest as possible, but the most important thing is that you keep that honest feel of what it is that you're trying to say. When you're writing something with dialogue than you can't be faulted for not recording what a person said word for word, it's impossible to remember that or to expect that of someone. I think that it is important though that what is said characterizes the person who is speaking, and if it's a specific conversation that you remember you should try to include as many of the actual words as possible. 

When it comes to combining events for dramatic effect I'm kind of torn. I think that if it would compromise the integrity of the story than you should defiantly avoid it, like was the case with that guy who combined his charity to make it sound better than it was. But if you're only combining together pieces of things where they could have happened or did happen, just not all at the same exact time than I'm alright with it. I don't know if that makes sense.

I guess when you get down to it, it just depends on how honest you're being. By telling the reader that what you are writing is non-fiction you are in a sense gaining their trust that whatever you tell them actually happened. So, what you can and can not fabricate depends on how important it is to the integrity of the story, and whether or not you betray that trust by what you choose to say.