Please take a moment to locate the exit nearest your seat, keeping in mind the nearest exit may be behind you, and take note of your emotions as you read the following two quibs. (Quib: noun a short vignette intended to convey a fact or lesson)
A hypothetical situation: A made up man named Henson V. Benson is hatching chickens for his science class. While Mr. Benson is getting ice cream out of the refridgerator, the chickens escape, and he has to run all over his appartment to find them. He hears a peeping coming out of the sink, but he can't see anything, so he hits the switch for the light above the sink. Except he hits the wrong switch, and activates the garbage disposal. Chicken smoothie, anyone?
Pretty sad, huh? OK, here's another one. This one really happened to me, though.
I was in fourth grade, and we had "class hamsters". There were two of them, Susie and Buckster. Each weekend, one student would have the responsibility of taking the two hamsters home and taking care of them. I was so excited, as any fourth-grader would be, when my turn came around. That weekend, a big storm blew through. I
used to
still love big storms, and this one was a monster. So I'm laying in bed, 9:30-ish, and I hear this completely helpless squealing coming from the cage laying at the foot of the bed. Thunder claps, and I hear some more desperate squeals. So, of course, I get out of bed, and find the two hamsters huddling together in the corner of the cage, scared out of their wits. What did I do? I took them out of their cage, and cuddled them until they both fell asleep in my lap.
So now you've heard both stories. Which one affected you more? The second one? How come?
If you're at a loss for words, I'll tell you why. Because it actually happened. No matter how good of a writer I am, something that actually happened will always sound more realistic and touching if it's something I can write from memory. The reader knowing that it actually happened makes it that much better.
When you watch a science-fiction movie, you're looking for flaws. Imperfections. Implausibilities (it's a real word-- look it up!). You've been raised (hopefully) to take nothing at face value, and question everything you see and hear. So knowing that what you are seeing was really a bunch of press-board on a sound stage in Century City takes away the impact of the movie. The same goes for written literature. Knowing that a book was written by some British woman sitting in a coffee shop pounding away on MS Word removes some of the emotional energy from the reader. Because it didn't actually happen, and no one is trying to convince you of anything otherwise. When a book/movie/photograph/whathaveyou is something real-- it actually happened-- you stop looking for the inconsistencies and simply believe. Therefore, when something stupendous happens, like, say, a main character dies, you feel sadder if it's non-fiction, because someone, somewhere, actually died. And that was eight commas in one sentence. Boo-ya!
The question for this evening was why is it important that the book we're reading, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, is non-fiction. Each and every event in this book really happened, exactly as it is written. There's no room for debate about details. It happened that way. The fact that it wasn't cleaned up or heavily edited drives that point home. Nothing was passed through a filter.
I'm out of time again. Thank you for reading "The Words of Magic". Please collect your personal belongings and exit to your left.
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