Resonse to discussion of Frey

I feel that Frey wrote his story for the pure purpose of having it published and to make some money. It is unfortunate that Frey published his work as non fiction instead of the fiction story it really is. An author should take into consideration that readers are affected by what they are taking in. Frey talked about certain topics that could really give vulnerable readers the wrong ideas on being an alcoholic or drug addict and not needing any real help to kick the habit. He also gives readers a false idea of what it is like to be in prison, a breezy three months of reading that goes by like free time. Authors have the responsibility to take readers and their real lives into consideration. Someone reading this story may be severely affected by what they take out of it and it could give them false hope for similar situations that may be happening in their life.
"Truth" can be something that actually happened, or the way you honestly remember something happening. Truth is not something you know is far from the reality of a situation. Since people have different perspectives it is hard for an author to determine how someone reading the work will take it in. An author cannot account for EVERYones perspective, some topics just wont appeal to some people and that’s fine. Crossing lines is difficult in writing, because there aren’t many boundaries. To me, a writer crossing a boundary would be something along the lines of a rapist trying to write to a female based audience with a sympathetic tone. Other than that, writing should not have a lot of limitations. I also don’t think that the category of the story really matters to everyone, mostly just very easily influenced readers. If a story is good and it keeps the reader turning pages then it has served its purpose to entertain and intrigue people, unless it’s specifically written as a do it yourself or self help book.
I think that rounding corners is necessary to keep a story interesting. Just because all the events led up to the ultimate outcome doesn’t mean that they will carry the reader through the story easily. Sometimes exaggerating or making things up helps for the entertainment purposes. Changing names is necessary in some cases also because it is not up to the author to decide what people will know about real characters and what they won’t know. Since writing is biased on the authors’ part, depicting a real life person in a story will be unfair even if they are portrayed as a saint. Changing names just helps keep the characters real lives private. Sometimes making composite characters can be a good thing depending on the part they play. As long as the writer isn’t combining two different people or events to create the main part of the story, then small alterations are pretty harmless.