According to Julia Novak in her introduction of “Experiments of Life Writing,” she delves into the many similarities and differences between nonfiction and fiction writing, more specifically focusing on how these genres have changed throughout the 20th and 21st century along with how in certain types of writing, they can both rely on each other to make it (the writing) much more enticing. A few examples of this would include historical fiction stories such as The Book Thief, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and many more. These examples illustrate how fiction informs life writing because according to Novak, these fictional stories contain “external, real-world references” which incorporates “selected facts can be imaginatively manipulated in fiction,” since fiction isn’t bound to true 100% accuracy. (p.7) Since a majority of nonfiction stories aren’t completely true, many questionable facts are tweaked in order to achieve a certain goal, whether it be an author’s message or make it more enjoyable for whatever audience is reading that story. This can also explain the sudden emergence of more films that are based on a true story, especially in the case of horror movies, since that would definitely attract more movie goers.

Fiction is a type of genre in literary writing, that are usually short stories or novels. These stories are often completely untrue or made up that involves imaginary places and/or people. Now the opposite of fiction, is clearly nonfiction where these stories are real involving real people and/or locations. The distinction between them lies in their definition since one involves completely fabricated events and figures while the other integrates real life people and events in its stories. While they both have a clear distinction between each other, it is often blurred in different forms of writing since one often intermingles with the other in order to maximize the efficiency of that story. For instance, many autobiographies have often received flak due to the author’s either tweaking the real life fact or even completely fabricating certain facts in order to sell books or make their life story more enticing and less dull.