Gottle O' Geer

By Ewan

Wed, 02 Sep 2026
  • 115 reads
4 comments
 

"All writing is Ventriloquism" 

                                                  David Shields 

Is it though? I'm sure the thinking behind this is the same as the CW dictum (maybe that should be Diktat) "write what you know".  For me the best fiction is less ventriloquism and more speaking in tongues. Or mimetism. As unlike the author or their real experiences as possible. 
I mean, if not, I would be a Victorian-age serial killer, an ex-CIA spy in Spain, an angel in the Celestial Bureau of Investigation or any number of other protagonists who I most certainly am not. Fiction - stories you, I - and everybody else - make up. 

But the very worst fiction of all is "autofiction" - because it isn't. Fiction that is. It's the thinly disguised book about an author's friend (though not for much longer after writing it). The other side of this coin is the invented autobiography. Too much exaggeration and it is fiction, masquerading as truth. Much like many a curriculum vitae.  

Of course, the author is putting his own invented words in the mouths of his characters. However, it's not truly ventriloquism. Speaking from the gut. That's what it means. So, they  may be the words the author wrote, but the misogynistic comment, the so-called banter and, yes, the racist slur, are most likely not a reflection of the author's views.

Because it's fiction. M a d e   U p   S t u f f!

 

Certificate U
Non-fiction
Rant

Comments

Submitted by airyfairy on

Interesting thoughts. I like the idea that writing fiction is 'speaking in tongues', and I get very frustrated at the idea that 'writing what you know' is sometimes taken to apply only to physical or lifestyle experiences rather than emotions. If you've known love, grief, jealousy or whatever, you can take that and set it in the year 9538 somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy, or in a cotton mill in Lancashire in the 19th century, as long as you do the homework for the setting. Although I am wary of hijacking some specific experiences that I don't have a hope in hell of understanding.

I sometimes think being a fiction writer is like being an actor - what comes out in the performance is not who we actually are, but we might be applying a bit of the Method in our approach. Just a bit. If we've got any sense, we're not going to go full Daniel Day-Lewis. I'll do my research, but for my latest WIP, I'm not going to be running around a city looking for ghosts. Although in my city, the bloody things come unbidden. According to the Tourist Office.

Good to share thoughts!

Submitted by Ewan on

 see/do writing. Research is very important, most definitely. Of course, this rant is a little tongue in cheek, if a writer puts nothing at all of themselves in a piece then - I suppose - they are nothing more than their own ghost writer.

Ha! I've been thinking about that all yesterday ... being your own ghost-writer. About as mad a concept as old Erwin's bloody cat!

Author Page at the 'Zon
 

Submitted by Turlough on

I can’t do fiction. With all that reality rattling around in my head I can’t see the point of making stuff up. So I write autobiographically and embellish it to make it more interesting. So then technically it’s no longer autobiographical. But my writing also tends to include personal fantasy and rant. When I’m writing I always know I’m writing but apart from that I haven’t a clue what I’m doing. Eventually the day will dawn when ‘bollocks’ is officially recognised as a literary genre and it will all have been worthwhile.

Turlough

Submitted by Ewan on

  but I think it's what all my submissions to literary agents/commissioning editors end up being filed under.

Author Page at the 'Zon