with Mark Reutlinger
We are delighted to welcome author Mark Reutlinger to Omnimystery News, courtesy of TLC Book Tours, which is coordinating his current book tour. We encourage you to visit all of the participating host sites; you can find his schedule here.
Mark's debut mystery introduces amateur sleuth Rose Kaplan and her loyal sidekick Ida in Mrs. Kaplan and the Matzoh Ball of Death (Alibi; November 2014 ebook formats).
His guest post for us today is titled, "The Writing Process: Novels vs. Non-Fiction".
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Photo provided courtesy of
Mark Reutlinger
There are many differences between fiction and non-fiction beyond the obvious "actual facts vs. something I made up." As an author who spent his entire (first) career as an attorney and law professor, and who is now writing novels, I have seen the process from both sides. When someone asks me whether I would rather write a law treatise or a novel, I find it difficult to answer, something like being asked whether I like playing tennis better than playing the clarinet, both of which I do extensively. But I certainly can explain how the process for each is different, and what I like or dislike about each. No doubt my experience is different from other writers of either (or both) fiction and non-fiction, so I will only purport to speak for myself.
When I wrote a legal treatise, I was writing for an audience of either lawyers or law students, either of which would be relying on what I wrote for serious and important matters. A client's welfare, or a student's grade, could depend on the accuracy and clarity of my statements. Therefore there was little room for creativity in these manuscripts. Each statement of the law had to be correct and backed up by one or more citations of authority. Statements of opinion or predictions of future developments had to be presented as such and be based on a defensible process of reasoning. It was (and still is) a rewarding and engaging enterprise, but not a lot of fun.
When I took early retirement from teaching and began writing fiction, suddenly my imagination was freed to roam at will, like Rapunzel finally released from that imprisoning tower. I could, in a sense, play God: If I wanted characters to be good or bad, that was what they would be. If I wanted it to rain on those characters, it would rain; or they could be bathed in sunshine. In other words, I was no longer restricted to facts, or even honest opinions. My only real restrictions were that my stories should be interesting and my characters somewhat believable, at least within the confines of the story. My creative side was liberated, and it has been enjoying the freedom ever since.
Perhaps my most satisfying experience in the context of fact vs. fiction was when I was able to combine the two sides in one manuscript. The premise of my novel Made in China is that all of the products that are "made in China" and that fill the shelves of our stores suddenly disappear when a hostile Chinese government embargoes everything headed for the West. Although I consider the premise to be (unfortunately) all too realistic — something that easily could happen someday — the story I wove around it is pure fiction, the product exclusively of my creative side. In the course of the story, however, I weave in many historical facts, and those had to be accurate. The Chinese government's fictional motivation, for example, is related to the very real Cultural Revolution of the 1960's and '70's, which had a devastating effect on the Chinese population. I had to do considerable research to be sure I represented the facts of that episode of Chinese political history accurately. And when I wanted to describe the effects of the embargo on companies and products that the reader would recognize, from Boeing airplanes to Sunbeam appliances, I had to research the histories of those companies and their products. I was free, of course, to speculate as I wished as to how the companies would act in 2020, when Made in China takes place, or any time in the future; but I wanted to be strictly factual regarding anything taking place before the novel was published and that therefore was now historical fact. When I wanted to make up actions of a company in the past, I created a fictional one, and then I was free to have them do — or to have done — whatever best fit the plot.
For me, then, writing fiction and non-fiction are very different exercises with different purposes; but they are not incompatible, and in the right setting, they can get along quite well.
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Mark Reutlinger is a professor of law emeritus at Seattle University. Born in San Francisco, Mark graduated from UC Berkeley and now lives with his wife, Analee, in University Place, Washington.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at NONE and his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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Mrs. Kaplan and the Matzoh Ball of Death
Mark Reutlinger
A Rose Kaplan Mystery
