Fiction Author

I have a confession to make. I am a fiction author.

I did write a speculative fiction piece recently and was pretty happy with how it turned out. But that is not what qualifies me for the title. My real credentials as a fiction author are an extensive and largely unconscious history of making up stories about people. People I love. People I work with. People I have never met. In every case, I take whatever I observe and overlay my own biases, emotions, and assumptions onto it. Then I write a story. A fully realized, emotionally compelling story about what that person is thinking, what they intended, and why they did what they did. It’s good work. I believe every word of it.

The only problem is that it is fiction. Almost completely made up.

Here is the part that is hard to hear: your brain is designed to do this. Neuroscientists call it the narrative brain. Human beings are wired to make sense of the world through story. When information is incomplete, the brain does not sit with uncertainty. It connects whatever dots are available and fills the rest in. A stern look, a missed call, or a two-word reply to a long email—your brain builds a complete and coherent story around those fragments. Then, when the story clicks into place, it releases a small hit of dopamine. Your brain is literally rewarding you for finishing a narrative, regardless of whether the story is true. It feels like insight. It is mostly invention.

This wiring was useful once. Creating quick narratives helped our ancestors figure out who was a friend and who was a threat. That instinct is still running in us. The problem is that most of us never put the pen down.

There are a few cognitive traps that make our stories worse. The first is the fundamental attribution error. When someone behaves in a way that inconveniences us, we blame their character rather than their circumstances. They did not reply because they are dismissive. They were short in the meeting because they are difficult. The possibility that someone might be overwhelmed, grieving, or just having a hard week barely registers. Character as explanation arrives first and stays longest.

The second trap is confirmation bias. Once we have written the first chapter, we filter everything through it. We notice what supports our story and quietly delete what complicates it. Our certainty grows around something we invented.

The third layer is the most uncomfortable. Some of what we write about others is actually about ourselves. When I make up a story about why someone is upset, I often assume it is because of me, because that is where my insecurity lives. When I decide that someone’s silence means disrespect, I am usually revealing my own need for affirmation more than I am reading them accurately. The fiction is less a portrait of them and more a window into whatever I have not yet dealt with in myself.

A team member goes quiet in a meeting. In about thirty seconds, I have decided they are disengaged. Meanwhile, they are thinking about whether they left the stove on. Someone does not respond for three days, and I’ve written a novel about how they do not value my work. We are fast writers and prolific ones, and the stories almost never reflect reality in ways that matter.

This is particularly damaging for a leader because leaders do not just write stories and keep them to themselves. They act on them. The story becomes the operating reality. Conversations are avoided, feedback is withheld, and trust quietly erodes. All based on fiction we authored and then forgot we invented.

The antidote requires one thing most of us resist: admitting we do not actually know.

Learn to notice when you are writing. The tightening in your chest when you read a message a certain way. The irritation that arrives before you have spoken to anyone. The assumption that sits so comfortably it feels like a fact. Those are your cues. That is the pen moving. Stop. You’re in the middle of a creative writing exercise—not a leadership moment.

Then replace the story with a question. A real one. “I noticed you seemed quiet in there. Everything okay?” Or simply, “Help me understand what you were thinking.” A genuine question hands the authorship back to the person who actually lived the experience. Their real story is almost always more interesting than yours—and far less catastrophic. If you want to be a fiction writer, go for it. If you want to be a leader, writing less and asking more is the Bison Way.