Has there ever been a True Story category? Should there be one?

[ElectricBlue]

I think the site wants to avoid getting drawn into the weeds deciding on how much detail has to be fictionalized from a 'based on actual events' that many people use as the seeds of their stories, so they will just say, "No thank you," to anything purporting to be 'real' in that sense.

So you write it, but just don't say it. Readers can't tell the difference between fact and fiction anyway. I'd challenge anyone to look at any of my "café" stories and tell me which bits were true and where I went off into fantasy.

The end point is obvious, nearly always, but the point of departure, "That bit's not true," isn't always so easy to spot. I've had many comments saying, "Thank you both for sharing," which means those readers at least thought it was a true story, whereas in fact all characters and events were complete fiction.

 

[Bamagan]

So you write it, but just don't say it. Readers can't tell the difference between fact and fiction anyway. I'd challenge anyone to look at any of my "café" stories and tell me which bits were true and where I went off into fantasy.

The end point is obvious, nearly always, but the point of departure, "That bit's not true," isn't always so easy to spot. I've had many comments saying, "Thank you both for sharing," which means those readers at least thought it was a true story, whereas in fact all characters and events were complete fiction.

My point remains: the site content guidelines make clear that they don't want to publish things being billed as true stories about actual people, which is what the thread title is referring to. Bits of true events and people in stories being purported as fiction are an easy pass, until or unless someone complains about likeness rights or something from seeing themselves written about, perhaps.

 

[ElectricBlue]

My point remains: the site content guidelines make clear that they don't want to publish things being billed as true stories about actual people, which is what the thread title is referring to. Bits of true events and people in stories being purported as fiction are an easy pass, until or unless someone complains about likeness rights or something from seeing themselves written about, perhaps.

I agree. What I find curious, and we've seen it in a couple of recent drive throughs, is that some folk have a vehement insistence that, "only a true story can ever be truly erotic," as if they have some awesome sexual prowess that we mere writers can only ever aspire to.

But why do I get the feeling that most of those folk would produce the least erotic, most pedestrian stories imaginable? Just before you turned up, we had a couple of drive-throughs who thought, "Gee, I can write good business reports, ergo, my sex report is gonna be smokin' hot, too." Don't think we ever saw a story, though, so who knows.

 

[HuckPilgrim]

When you write fiction, everyone wants to know which parts were true. When you write memoir, they want to know which parts are made up. It's just a different way of approaching a story. Most people are here writing under fictitious names anyhow, so maybe the memoir effect wouldn't really hold up. But any story one writes as memoir is a tacit admission that the story is being presented as a lived experience. All that stuff about protecting the rights of the innocent 3rd parties has been dealt with before and there are plenty of solutions. It's not like no one has ever written a memoir before! It's just that there isn't a category here and this is the place people come to write erotic stories.