Post 5: My thoughts

          In my mind I think that a nonfiction piece of writing needs to be as truthful as you can make it, when I say this I mean that you shouldn't lie knowing that you are lying but there are some things we don’t know for certain, so we have to fill in the gap. There is a large difference between filling in gaps because you don’t know, and lying. When you lie, you know what you are doing and you are disgracing the name of nonfiction by knowing what you are doing is wrong but still acting like it is true with the case of James Frye “Bending the truth”. As Seth Greenland stated “You shouldn't lie… That the Greenland rule, don’t lie.” And he is saying this in response to when, in his novel A Million Little Pieces that he had a stint in prison for 6 months but in reality he only stayed a could hours and this really shows that a lie or stretching of the truth once discovered ruins the immersion of the book and pulls the reader out. Ultimately I think that you can fill in gaps for information that you don’t know or stretch the truth, but only if you state somewhere in your piece that this is 100% true or you didn't know all the information and had to fill in gaps. Aimee Bender stated that “It’s all about playing with from” when talking about how nonfiction is changing and she also says “Which is exciting for all writers.” So this shows to me at least that maybe people will grow accustom to stretching of the truth and that is what will be called nonfiction; But for right now I think that nonfiction should be as close to true as humanly possible and lying about events to add drama should stay with fiction pieces.