Hi, I’m Lou Sylvre, and I’ve been lucky enough to score a monthly spot here on Love Bytes. The seventh is my day, and this is my first effort. Often, my blog posts are humorous, but not this time. This time I’m deeply in earnest. (Which might be funny in and of itself.)
Ever since I became a thinking person, I’ve wondered about that eye-catching slogan, “Based on a true story.” Mostly it’s about movies, sometimes books or television series. There’s a place for “just the facts, ma’am” (although occasions when everyone agrees what the facts are can be very rare).
What troubles me is the difference between, “It’s the truth, I swear,” and “Wow, that is so true.”
What the phrase based on a true story really means when applied to a book or movie is something like this: “based on a fairly well-evidenced version of the facts, loosely construed.” For instance, you can watch or read any number of things about John F. Kennedy, his life, presidency, and assassination. Some of them include “true facts.” Like when he was born, the names of his parents and siblings, the day and the way he died, and even the way some people perceived those facts (which is a collection of facts perceptions, not facts about Kennedy. To tell the real truth about John Kennedy would require John Kennedy to do the writing. And if he were being completely honest, the truths he would write about would be his motives, his heartbreak, his joy, fear, surprise, gratitude.
When it comes to telling a true story, I believe fiction authors do it better.
When people respond to Star Wars—absolutely fictional as far as I know—they are responding to the truth that our lives are complex, far from black and white, the Darth Vader’s of the world have a story that matters, wisdom can be found in funny or even comical looking people (sorry Yoda),
that fear can give birth to true courage, and that no matter where we go, there we are—and unfortunately we are likely to run into a Jabba the Hutt. Those are true things.
When we read a love story we embrace all of it (usually); not only the sweet or the sexy but those moments where we use our loan our hearts to the characters on the page so they’ll have on to break. Why? Not because we love misery (most of us), but because the pain of loss, grief, worry, confusion, even anger rings true in us. When we read a story that shows it to us, draws us into the truth, whether it be the lightness of that ultimate kiss, the intensity of true love or hot sex, or the devastation of all those things that are hard to bear, we find a resting place in the shared truth of being human, of being alive, of being part of this vast sea of experience.
So, when I say that the novel By that Sin Fell the Angels by Jamie Fessenden is one of the best books I’ve ever read, what I mean is that for me, it is among the stories most true to my deep experience of life. 
When I say that Woke Up in a Strange Place by Eric Arvin is a truly exceptional read, I mean that it investigates possibilities that are among my most hopeful. Suki Fleet’s This is Not a Love Story has joined ranks in my mind with the truest and most beautiful love stories, not because the way the boys lives are depicted in all their poverty—although that is very accurate—but because Fleet has entered into the minds and hearts of these young men, sought out their truest fears, pains, and yes, even hopes which sometimes refuse to die in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence. She loaded her brush with humanity, with the colors of those things as they dwell inside me.
Those are truths, my friends, and so powerful that, unlike facts, they can change hearts, minds, and even worlds.
As an author, I aspire to emulate the work of hundreds of authors that have spent heart’s-blood to tell me “a true story.” If I succeed even a little, I’ve done my job.
If anyone cares to comment, perhaps tell me of some book or author that has touched your deepest truths, I’d love to hear. Thanks for reading in any case, and huge thanks to Love Bytes for letting me hang out here and ramble on.
