NON-FICTION PRESENTED AS FICTION

THXXXX

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This may be hoping for too much, but does anyone know if citing sources would be required to present facts in a nonfiction book, but the facts are presented in a fiction part of the book with the intent that the reader should be free to consider the facts as fiction.

To help with the inevitable confusion attached to the above sentence, think of a novel based on real people and real events but part of the book is fiction.

Thanks.
 

TessB

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You mean something like The Other Boleyn Girl, with fiction and fact mixed together in a vaguely sourced stew and sold as an historical novel, or do you mean a book with structural divisions between a factual, sourced chapter with citations, and a chapter of fictional narrative?

In both cases, I would not expect to see footnotes in the fictional sections, though as a reader I would be pleased with endnotes/suggested reading at the end listing sources for the interesting tidbits.
 

LittlePinto

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LittlePinto

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You mean something like The Other Boleyn Girl, with fiction and fact mixed together in a vaguely sourced stew and sold as an historical novel, or do you mean a book with structural divisions between a factual, sourced chapter with citations, and a chapter of fictional narrative?

In both cases, I would not expect to see footnotes in the fictional sections, though as a reader I would be pleased with endnotes/suggested reading at the end listing sources for the interesting tidbits.

The historical fiction I read usually has an author's note at the end which lays out what is fact and what is fiction. However, most of the facts really fell into the category of general knowledge. You'd see the same piece of information in hundreds of different books, e.g. symptoms of bubonic plague. I suspect that the more specific the information is to a particular author, the more necessary it is to note exactly who it belongs to.

I am not, however, an IP lawyer and this is a very gray area of copyright law with potentially serious repercussions for getting it wrong.
 

THXXXX

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You mean something like The Other Boleyn Girl, with fiction and fact mixed together in a vaguely sourced stew and sold as an historical novel, or do you mean a book with structural divisions between a factual, sourced chapter with citations, and a chapter of fictional narrative?

In both cases, I would not expect to see footnotes in the fictional sections, though as a reader I would be pleased with endnotes/suggested reading at the end listing sources for the interesting tidbits.

It would be the latter. (a book with structural divisions between a factual, sourced chapter with citations, and a chapter of fictional narrative)
 

TessB

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I'm not entirely sure what the best way to structure that would be, in all honesty. Certainly not footnotes in the fiction, unless you're Terry Pratchett!

What if you did something like endnotes in the factual chapters, with your numbered references, and an author's note at the end of the fictional chapters, listing the sources for the non-common-knowledge information? That way every chapter would have the same physical structure - a chunk of text, followed by explanations of the sources - but stay in a format appropriate to that specific chapter, and whether it's academic or fiction.

And then if your publisher has other ideas, the author's notes and endnotes are already present and can be moved around/combined/removed as required.
 

LittlePinto

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It would be the latter. (a book with structural divisions between a factual, sourced chapter with citations, and a chapter of fictional narrative)

I've seen something like this before. Go look at Philip Ziegler's The Black Death and see how he does it.

The best move is to read in the style you want to write in.
 

TessB

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Ooh, good reference.

An addendum, THX - you wouldn't need citations for the fiction sections at all, if all of the information is also presented and properly cited in the non-fictional sections. (I'm thinking of texts I've seen where there's a short narrative passage as an introduction to a non-fiction chapter that then explains the narrative -- all of the sources are footnoted within the non-fiction section, and no new information is included in the narratives.)
 

THXXXX

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What if you did something like endnotes in the factual chapters, with your numbered references, and an author's note at the end of the fictional chapters, listing the sources for the non-common-knowledge information? That way every chapter would have the same physical structure - a chunk of text, followed by explanations of the sources - but stay in a format appropriate to that specific chapter, and whether it's academic or fiction.

Yes, I have used endnotes in the factual chapters. I am hoping to avoid any citing of sources of the facts in the fiction portion of the book, but I do not know if that would be considered plagerism of the facts, despite my presenting the facts as fiction.
 

THXXXX

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Sorry for that pathetic misspelling of plagiarism.
 

frimble3

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This may be hoping for too much, but does anyone know if citing sources would be required to present facts in a nonfiction book, but the facts are presented in a fiction part of the book with the intent that the reader should be free to consider the facts as fiction.

To help with the inevitable confusion attached to the above sentence, think of a novel based on real people and real events but part of the book is fiction.

Thanks.
It might depend on the nature of the non-fiction, and the fictionalized facts.
I've frequently seen something similar in 'self-help' relationship books, especially by authors claiming professional experience. There's an example of a problem, usually set off from the main text by typeface or the like, then the author's explanation and/or solution.
Generally there's no further citation for the examples, aside from the occasional 'From the case-files of...' or 'Names and details have been changed to protect privacy'. There's also nothing to say 'The examples have been totally made up', but the reader could take it either way, I suppose.
 

Fictionalizer

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I've done research into different sub genres in non-fiction, specifically memoir. I found the following:

roman à clef - a novel in which actual persons and events are disguised as fictional characters. Usually in the form of a story.

biographical novel - life story documented in history and transformed into fiction through the insight and imagination of the writer.

fictional biography - a novel that goes beyond the events of a person's life by being fleshed out with imagined scenes and dialog.

nonfiction novel - a novel in which real events and people are written about, but not camouflaged. Reality is presented imaginatively and imposes a novelistic structure.

memoir - a slice of life told as a story; a work of art more than the typical nonfiction book.
 

Jrubas

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I don't know if this is the place to mention it, but the title of this thread made me think: The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson. It was marketed as nonfiction, but is now mostly regarded as fiction. Whatever it was, I dug the heck out of it.
 

veinglory

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Moby Dick is essentially structured that way, although what was thought to be fact about whales back then mostly isn't now.