Home For Fiction – Blog

Poetic license (or artistic licence) refers to ignoring factual truth for creative purposes. There is a wide area covered by this definition and so, inevitably, some uses are proper whereas other improper.

In other words, there are ways to use poetic licence properly (enhancing the affective power of your novel), but also improperly (muddling the waters and creating confusion).

In this post we’ll take a look at all these elements – what poetic licence refers to in more detail, ways of using poetic licence, and of course which (and why) are the ways I consider optimal.

Poetic Licence and Negative Capability

If you recall my post on negative capability, the one-line definition I gave was this:

[Negative capability is] when you write beautiful things and you don’t care if they make sense.

Using poetic licence, in its widest definition, is related to this. Essentially, the author chooses to focus on affect instead of hard reality, in order to express a particular meaning or emotive reaction.

An Example of Poetic Licence

Before we talk more about different ways of using poetic licence (and which ones I recommend), let’s see a short, easy example.

It’s from my book The Other Side of Dreams, so it’s also a recommended case! We’ll see later why.

This excerpt is near the end of the book. The protagonist is about to depart from Helsinki for a destination the reader does not know – an element consistent with the ambiguity describing the ending. And then, the following incident occurs.

He reaches the airport and goes to the monitors to check the information regarding his flight. He notices that the flights to Athens, Munich, and Islamabad are all listed one after another. A beam of meaningful, satisfying astonishment explodes on his beardless face. He stands there for quite some time looking at the trio, knowing that only one of those is his flight.

Chances are, you don’t even notice any kind of poetic licence here, am I right?

And yet, there is one detail that is counterfactual: There is no direct flight connecting Helsinki to Islamabad, and as a result it wouldn’t have been displayed on a monitor.

However, this is immaterial for my creative purposes here, which needed these three specific cities listed for the protagonist to see – and for reasons that would have been obvious if you had read the book.

However, if we suppress reality for creative purposes, it’s crucial to know what kind of reality we can suppress, and to which extent.

Ways of Using Poetic Licence

Let’s now take a look at different ways of using poetic license in a novel (or short story). The good is what I recommend, the bad is what I don’t, and the ugly is one that will depend on your personal circumstances and priorities.

The Good: When Readers Don’t Notice

The reason my example above, from The Other Side of Dreams works well as artistic licence is because an overwhelming majority of readers don’t even notice there’s anything untrue there.

Let’s use another, imaginary example. Suppose it’s important for your creative purposes to have a character accidentally get locked inside a public building, before sunset. But it’s winter, the sun sets early, and the public building in question should be still open.

It doesn’t matter; go ahead and write the scene this way.

The reason it doesn’t matter goes back to what I mentioned in the previous section: the kind of reality you suppress, and the extent you suppress it.

Opening hours of a building can be a fluid thing. Most readers won’t even realize there’s anything untrue there, and the few that will do, can likely provide their own explanation. Remember that you shouldn’t explain every little detail, and readers need to supply their own meaning. Maybe the building closed earlier in that area, maybe it was a specific day, maybe there was a water leak. Readers come up with explanations if they need to.

The second important element is that such a use of poetic licence is very brief and very subtle; an insignificant detail. The extent is marginal, which makes it easier for the “deception” to pass unnoticed.

But what if it were extensive, tilting the balance away from the narrative?

The Bad: When Poetic Licence Overshadows the Narrative

When the use of poetic licence is extensive, it’s easier to notice it. This in itself isn’t necessarily bad – remember that readers can supply their own explanations – but an instance of poetic licence that is extended also signifies an imbalance toward the plot and away from the narrative.

In other words, once you tell a big lie, you might feel the need to keep lying simply to keep the thing from imploding.

Imagine you have a character who is a gardener. Let’s say she plants tomato seeds, and already two weeks later, they’ve grown and produced tomatoes. If it’s a one-off, the audience – though they will likely still feel something’s not right with this discrepancy – might forget about it.

But what if you turned this into some sort of plot element? What if, for your creative purposes, the gardener grows plants at a much faster rate than we know it’s possible? Your audience can’t go beyond this constant, blatant disregard of basic biological facts. Although there is some nuance there, as we’ll see in the concluding section, the fact remains: Such extensive instances of poetic license confuse the reader.

Also keep in mind that, the closer a big lie is to the end of the narrative, the likelier the chance of creating a Deus ex Machina (Surprising-and-Avoidable) kind of ending, which isn’t a good thing. See more about this in the post on narrative endings.

The Ugly: Aspect of Genre

If you take a look at my post on worldbuilding in fiction, you’ll find a note explaining how you can’t distort scientific facts if you’re writing science fiction. There might be spaceships, teleportation, and what not, but you better be well prepared to explain why, in a scientific manner.

Using poetic licence in such a context clearly departs from my recommendations further above, stating that you can do it if it passes unnoticed.

You might argue that many of your potential sci-fi readers might indeed not notice something unscientific, and you might be right. But would you be willing and ready to face criticism from those who will call you on your choice?

That’s what makes this “ugly” rather than simply “bad”. Narratively speaking, it might not create issues, but generically speaking (in terms of genre), things change. And with that, let’s talk a bit about such “special” genres.

Poetic Licence and Genre: Fantasy and Magical Realism

Instead of a conclusion, let’s wrap up by pointing out an important fact, which is a separating line between using poetic licence and writing, say, fantasy or magical realism.

Using poetic licence is a literary device. Fantasy and magical realism are genres (or perhaps modes; see my post on the difference between the Gothic and other modes for more details).

In other words, you use poetic licence in order to boost the affective power of a scene, or to underline the symbolic nature of a certain excerpt.

Fantasy and magical realism in a way achieve the exact opposite: “Poetic licence” (the suspension of facts and reality) in such genres do not appear out of place (and hence don’t draw the reader’s attention), precisely because counterfactuality pervades them.

Poetic Licence is Noticed only among Factuality

You’re reading Lord of the Rings. There are orcs and dwarfs. Alright, big deal. Take a look at my “Gothic, Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction cheat-sheet”. The idea of fantasy fiction is that the reader (and, obviously, the characters) don’t pay attention to counterfactuality.

Of course, the suspension of reality does allow for certain plot elements to materialize, which is ultimately a creative purpose; a creator of affect.

Perhaps this is especially the case in magical realism, which is basically a highly realistic – even naturalistic – world, our world, but with the unexplained and even the supernatural going through it.

But the fact remains: Poetic licence is a literary device, meant to be deployed in an otherwise factual narrative. Ultimately, it’s not really relevant in magical realism or fantasy, and perhaps not in experimental fiction other.

If you choose to extensively bend the truth in an otherwise factual narrative – as we saw in the gardener example earlier – you’ll run the risk of confusing your audience in terms of genre and the associated expectations.