A work of fiction is an arrangement of incidents devised to display a number of characters in action and to interest the reader. It is not a copy of life as it is lived. Just as in a novel conversations cannot be reproduced exactly as they take place in real life, but have to be summarised so that only the essential points are given, and then with clearness and concision, so facts have to suffer some deformation in order to accord with the author's plan and hold the reader's attention. Irrelevant incidents must be omitted; repetitions must be avoided — and, heaven knows, life is full of repetitions; isolated occurrences and events that in real life would be separated by a passage of time may often have to be brought into proximity. No novel is entirely free of improbabilities, and to the more usual ones readers have become so accustomed that they accept them as a matter of course. The novelist cannot give a literal transcript of life, he draws a picture for you which, if he is a realist, he tries to make life-like; and if you believe him he has succeeded.
'Flaubert and Madame Bovary' [Ten Novels and Their Authors, 1954]
Use the link below to read about the life and work of British novelist, playwright and essayist W SOMERSET MAUGHAM:
http://www.angelfire.com/indie/anna_jones1/maugham.html
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