At what point does non-ficton become fiction?

[Old Bull Lee]

I recently read Papillion by Henri Charierre which is autobiographical and therefore classed as non-fiction.

A while back I read On The Road by Jack Kerouac which I understood to also be more or less autobiographical but it is classed as fiction?

Does anybody know how much a story must be altered before it changes from non-fiction to fiction?

 

[Faran]

It is my opinion that if we do not class non-fiction as the catergorical, unembellished, unexaggerated truth, then anything could be validly classified as non-fiction. What we as humans write about is confined to our knowledge, all of which is based on the real world or other books based on the real world.

Of course I can be more liberal. Changing names for the sake of anonimity should not classify writing as merely based on the truth, but something like Robinson Crusoe is fiction despite inspiration from fact.

 

[sally_sausages]

Another excellent example of "faction" is "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote. Although it is largely factual, and he followed the Clutter murder case closely....there is a lot of the text which is extremely descriptive and can only be based on how he imagines things to have happened.

 

[Helenl]

I think there should be another category: Based on true account
You could have fiction - based on fact - non-fiction That would make it logical to say fiction, faction, fact. We could drop the non-fiction, and simply call it fact.
I read lots of things that are embellished true stories. I have a friend who writes a lot of that.