REALITY FICTION

So I've been thinking a great deal about this idea of reality fiction and yesterday while watching a U-tube video I heard the same idea reiterated. The man who was talking about writing in general and screen writing in particular claimed that you can write about heartbreak only if you get your heart broken. And that your writing should be drawn from real life. I beg to disagree. I've been hearing this for so long that I thought I would address this topic today. 

Is writing a mirror of life? Yes. It is. Is fiction an imaginative piece of work? Yes it is. Then does it follow you cannot mirror life if you are writing fiction? No. It doesn't. Because that's where imagination comes in. Let us not deride imagination. It is a powerful tool in all creation. It helps us in creating situations, people who might not be real, but simulate reality. All actors do that. Enact people or situations which might be far removed from their reality. I think that makes them good actors. To be able to imagine themselves into their roles. They don't actually have to murder people to act as murderers. To commit crimes to portray criminals. To actually suffer heartbreak to portray it. Good actors simulate. So why should writers be any different? They cannot actually live the characters they create except in their imagination. In my opinion writers are not so different from actors. They too simulate. 

To say that you are a good writer only if you have lived your writing is to say you cannot write for instance, about the first world war because you were never born in that period. For that you must research your topic. Then use your imagination to dress that research. That's how a book is created. 

And it is in my opinion a very myopic way of looking at things to say you must write from real life. Your imagination is also very real, let's not forget. To you in your mind. The murderer in your book is as much as part of you as the hero. Because you have created them. You have given birth to them. Birthing you'll agree is the most real the most potent the most primeval connection in the universe. Nothing can transcend the bond between a mother and her child. In that sense all fictional characters are real. 

And what happens when a writer writes using only reality? Then he  becomes severely  limited. Because he cannot imagine beyond the scope of his experience. It means if I'm a campus writer I can  write only campus novels. If I'm from the corporate world I can only write about it. And that is where limitation comes in. Just because I was a schoolteacher I can only write about it and nothing else? It seems to be an absurd argument. Does my work becomes less because it is purely fiction ? Does it automatically become better if it is autobiographical in nature? No. I don't think it does. The best books I've read have not been autobiographical in nature but imagined pieces of work. That is my observation. That is my argument. I rest my case. You may or may not agree. This is what I think. What do you think?