I like narrative non-fiction and often struggle with this line between what really happened and what moves the story forward. I am never onboard for wholesale making things up, but for example, I have been known to concatenate two conversations into a single encounter when telling the story. Did the two conversations happen? Absolutely. Did they happen at the same time? No. Is that real? Is that authentic? Questions I ask myself a lot when writing narrative non-fiction. This is a great piece, thanks for getting me thinking.