My next few blog posts will be informed by some of the sessions I attended at the Perth Writers Festival. I’ll try to acknowledge the particular sessions and authors whose ideas and discussions helped me formulate each blog post where I can, though my notes did not extend to recording who exactly said what verbatim.

But this entry is devoted to something that I got generally from the festival across all the sessions I attended. This was the notion of truth in storytelling. Over and over again, authors spoke of being true to the story they were trying to tell, of making plot and character decisions with their eyes focussed firmly on what worked for the story over what would be popular or mainstream, of writing the best story they possibly could and letting the commercial/publishing chips fall where they may.

This was a sentiment that was incredibly refreshing for me to hear coming from successfully published mainstream (by which I mean, available in a bookstore) authors (though maybe they can afford to shrug it off and let the marketing department sort it out, since they’re already published and have a following…). It sometimes seems to me that the advice on writers’ sites and in writing books is so severely intent on the holy grail of getting published (writing as a business) that the notion of storytelling in itself (writing as an art) is lost, even derided as naive and foolish.

Some of the authors spoke of how the commercial concerns can be paralysing, if you’re constantly self-censoring (more on this next week) based on what might sell, whereas putting all that aside and being true to the story and the characters is incredibly freeing.

There is a hint, too, in the growing popularity of non-fiction, particularly memoir: people seek truth. Perhaps they are turning from fiction because the storytelling in fiction no longer illuminates the truth (or a truth) like it once did.

If there was a theme to this festival for me, it was the repeated mantra of truth in storytelling. Tell the best story you can. Read all the advice you like on the craft of writing (the nuts and bolts how-tos) and the business of writing, but the art of writing centres on sincerely telling the best story you can.

You can still listen to sessions at ABC Perth, and read more about the festival at its website.