Fiction

Any imaginative tale that is composed of characters working their way through circumstances and events is a fiction; therefore, a fiction can be a lie, an observation that is in keeping with the term's derivation from French and Latin precursors whose meaning is closer to lying. Nevertheless, current use of the term fiction is more commonly associated with storytelling for entertainment; thus, bookstores abound with fiction and nonfiction.

The creation of fiction in this sense is not lying, because such stories are contextualized by signals of a sort described by George Herbert Mead, signals that indicate this is play and that the story being told is one that only exists in imaginative space for the sake of pleasure. Whenever an untruth is marked untrue in its telling, even if only through contextualizing actions and gestures (for example, by tickling the listener or winking while telling the tale), it is regarded by the receiver as an entertaining imaginative pleasure, not as a lie.

Nevertheless, the expression “pure fiction” may be used when characterizing a lie, and various stories told as true ultimately come to be regarded as elaborately framed misrepresentations or obfuscations of the truth, in effect lies. Robert Coles, for example, makes clear that Erik Erikson grew up under the fiction that Theodor Homburger was his father. Similarly, the Warren Commission report, “Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy,” has been regarded as a fiction by many who claim the assassination was a conspiracy. Characterizing such reports as fictions (instead of saying “lies”) minimizes the defamation of the accusation while nevertheless asserting the existence of a deliberate inaccuracy.

It is uncommon and usually colloquial to refer to an isolated statement (for example, “The door is locked”) as a fiction, although this usage may be appropriate if the statement referenced clearly sits within a more complex narrative, particularly if that narrative is literary (for example, “Orson Welles's radio announcement that Martians had landed in upstate New York was a fiction”). In any case, a fiction is not regularly, and certainly not exclusively, regarded as a lie.