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After a summer clerking at a public defender’s office during law school in 1994, I knew I wanted to be a criminal defense attorney. At first I was shocked by the factory-like process by which fellow citizens could lose their freedom if no one aggressively stood in the way. Or even when someone did.
The human stories also attracted me – the too often ignored reality of how things come to be one versus another. I’ve been practicing criminal defense ever since – most often serious felony cases in Virginia and in Washington, D.C. Throughout this time I’ve always written stories, usually half-finished, unread versions that would sit hidden on a laptop. It took me years to understand how a complete story even works.
What I have learned is that a story works much like a court case. Both involve a narrative. Both have characters in various roles. Both are supposed to end in a way that makes sense – satisfying or not. Both often fail. But in both law and fiction, the narrative arc, whether one likes it, hates it, or is merely bored by it, must be there.
The difference between law and fiction is not that law is true and fiction false. Truth is often as hard to find in a courtroom as anywhere else. The real difference is that law must pretend life is simple. Thieves are greedy. Murderers, evil. Some are righteous. Others, sinners. Simple is good. Complicated, bad. The law may sometimes care about what happened, but the legal process would shut down if it had to figure out the whole truth behind why. No matter how complex a narrative, the law must reduce it to a few words.
Fiction, while by its definition invented, need not tell that lie. In fiction the devil is everywhere. And everyone has their story.
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