Fiction and Truth

Define: Verisimilitude: The appearance or semblance of truth; likelihood; probability.

Tim O'Brien used verisimilitude to help liven The Things They Carried. He depicted the horrors of the war. The emotional burdens. The pain and the fear and the stress that the soldiers faced. O'Brien seems to be pouring out the experience of the war from all his characters. Although the entire book is just a fictional story, it feels like an actual, non-imaginary story as "stories can make things present" (O'Brien 180).

This brings up the connection between Truth and Fiction. To what extent does Truth and Fiction connect? As George R. R. Martin and Francis Bacon once said, "All fiction has to have a certain amount of truth in it to be powerful" "Truth is so hard to tell, it needs fiction to make it plausible." If fiction has truth in it, and truth has fiction in it, doesn't that mean that they are interchangeable between the two? 

Pie Chart of Truth and Fiction! 

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures. But if fiction reveals truth, it is truth. If it produces a meaning or something applicable to current standards, then it is truth. If it conveys motives, themes and symbols, then it is the truth. But if the truth is something so obscure and inapplicable, then isn't it like fiction?