Fiction or Nonfiction

[George Wilder Jr.]

For me, I really enjoy inventing every piece of the puzzle in a work of fiction. I love it. Every writer is different. No one writer thinks the same. What works for him may not work for her in terms of how to put a story together. Fiction for me is not work. It really is fun. Non-fiction is work, there is mountains of research that goes into every page. Inventing colorful characters are a breeze for me.

[D K Gaston]

Even in genre fiction, unless you're creating new worlds as many sci-fi and fantasy authors do, there is a lot of fact finding research that has to be done. I have a book on mind-control, and had to go back and research everything I could find on programs the CIA and the military conducted during the Cold War era. I also had to find out what CIA headquarters and its surrounding area looked like. Whew. Lots of work, but rewarding work. I enjoyed every minute of it. The fun about writing fiction is that I can embellish the facts and go in a direction the real world may never go.