One of the questions that fascinated me while writing my soon-to-be-released novel, A Necessary Fiction, was this: what happens when a fictional character starts to feel more real than the person who created her?
Novelists have wrestled with versions of this question for centuries. We spend months or years (more like weeks for me, but who’s counting?) inventing people who don’t exist, only to find ourselves talking about them as though they do. Even as I write that statement, I realize that for me, they do exist, just not in the reality you and I live in day to day. Fictional characters become familiar companions, occupying space in our imaginations alongside people we know in real life. But these days, it seems to me, the line between fiction and reality is becoming increasingly difficult to define.
Social media has given all of us the ability to create versions of ourselves. Most of us don’t think of these versions as fictional, yet they are inevitably selective. We choose which photographs to post, which stories to tell, which opinions to share, and which parts of our lives remain hidden. Over time, the person who exists online can begin to take on an identity distinct from the person sitting behind the keyboard. This idea became central to A Necessary Fiction.
One of the novel’s characters creates an online persona that gradually attracts attention, followers, and influence. What begins as an experiment becomes something more complicated. The persona develops its own audience, expectations, and momentum. People react to it as though it were entirely real. In some respects, it becomes real. It influences decisions. It shapes relationships. It changes events in the physical world. The character who created it discovers something unsettling: once a story acquires an audience, it no longer belongs entirely to its author.
Writers understand this phenomenon well. Some might say that every book becomes a collaboration between author and reader. Still, in my view, before that can happen, it must be a collaboration between the writer and her characters. Readers bring their own experiences, assumptions, and interpretations, but so do characters. Writers tell their story, and then the characters further evolve in the minds of those who encounter them. Meanings that the author never intended begin to emerge
Online identities work in much the same way. We create them, but we don’t completely control them. Other people participate in their construction. Expectations accumulate. Narratives form. Before long, maintaining the story can become as important as living the life behind it.
This tension lies at the heart of A Necessary Fiction. This book is a literary thriller that explores not only the stories we tell others but also the ones we tell ourselves. It asks whether truth is always as straightforward as we imagine and examines how narratives can protect us, deceive us, and sometimes take on a life of their own.
Perhaps that’s why the title resonates so strongly with me. A necessary fiction is more than a lie. It is a story we come to depend upon. It may begin as something invented, but over time, it becomes woven into our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
The question is not whether we live among fictions. We all do. The more interesting question is this: how do we know when a fiction has become reality?
Patricia J. Parsons 