How to write narrative non-fiction

Narrative non-fiction (NNF) is what I do a lot of.

Essentially, it’s creating a story out of non-fiction.

How do you keep the reader engaged?

I strongly believe that stories are fundamental to our humanness. It’s how we learn. What we emote to. What we share.

Learning how to tell stories is an important skill.

Workshop notes

Here’s some of the things I learnt from a workshop in Melbourne:

Voice is the climate of a piece of writing

Writing is a pilgrimage but it comes towards you

What is NNF?

• In fiction, you write what you know. In NNF, you write what you want to find out.
• Drive through the questions you’re interested in
• NNF is watching the self, watching the world

Ask yourself:

• What is your stake in this writing?
  • What is it beneath the story that makes me interested?
• What is this piece really about?
  • Why does it matter and who does it matter to?
  • Explore the questions driving the piece (often these will change throughout the journey)
• What future does this artwork make possible that wasn’t available before?
• Who is the reader?
  • Have a target person in mind and write to them

NNF creativity comes from:

• Development of a concept/idea
• Selection of detail
  • Your writing should not read as slow as real life
• Synthesis/compression of that detail to tell a story
• Quality of expression (“voice”)
  • How info is conveyed, not just what

Act as if you are the reader’s avatar, moving through a revelation

• Show the mind working out problems
• Show the mind moving on the page
• Show a mind trying to work things out

Avoid platitudes by drawing on experience only you have

• Individualise your voice
• What does the world press upon you?

Voice is you in a T-Shirt

• Be casual and conversational
• Avoid eloquent language and don’t talk down to your reader
• Elegance is ideal but this is simply smoothness and clarity

Don’t present yourself as a hero

• Rise and fall
• Be on a journey
• Explore the conflict of internal resources against external realities

Break up monotony

• Introduce the voices of others
• Set up a duet/dance with movement in persona from one pole to another
  • E.g. Naivety to experience, pessimism to optimism, sensory to intellectual

You may lose sight of the first motivations when you are farther along the journey

• Think about the beginner audience
• Ask questions on the readers behalf
• Define any necessary terms

For each chapter, write a cover which includes:

• Definitions and how they’re relevant
• What do I need to know (bottom of the iceberg)
• What does the reader need to know (top of the iceberg)

Move from scene to exposition

• Read books and look for their turns from scene to exposition (e.g. “what I didn’t know then was…”)

Scene:

• Capsule of time and space
• You don’t build a book out of sentences, you build them out of scenes
• What we gain is experience, not information

Exposition

• Provide context, history, backdrops
• You are more likely to lose you voice in exposition than in scene writing because it is not a lived experience
• Note how things changed in your mind (e.g. “I asked myself…”)
• Note details in an idiosyncratic way
• Be alongside a reader as if guiding through a city
  • In academic writing, we must explain every street and explain why we’re not going down them to prove that we have mastery of the subject
  • In NNF, we declare the path. We hold the readers hand and run with them

Ask where I am in the material:

• Centre stage (e.g. personal essay)
• Sharing the stage (e.g. celebrity profile)
• Near the sidelines (e.g. following a story)
• Off stage (e.g. a collage which is voiceless but with sensibility)

Keep the reader engaged

• Use small objects to tell big stories
• Be the fool in the room and ask the simple questions
• Include doubt and weigh up counter-evidence to become more trustable
• Avoid being condescending/holier-than-thou by being on the reader’s level

Reveal character traits through scenes, details and dialogue

• Use gesture and description to imply mood and speech delivery
• Don’t colour with inferred intent (e.g. “he said argumentatively” is subjective)

Get yourself a notebook:

• Fragments of conversations
• Sensorial pieces
• Encounters
• Research journey

Further reading

A great resource is

https://www.julian.com/guide/write/ideas

Here are some of the notes I took from him:

What makes nonfiction good?

People read nonfiction to learn and to feel. My framework for ensuring a blog post accomplishes both is to start with a first draft that focuses on “novel” ideas.

A novel idea is one that’s not just new to the reader, but also significant and not easily intuited. Think of it as new and worthwhile. There are five novelty categories:

• Counter-intuitive — “Oh, I never realized the world worked that way.”
• Counter-narrative — “Wow, that’s not how I was told the world worked!”
• Shock and awe — “That’s crazy. I would have never believed it.”
• Elegant articulations — “Beautiful. I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
• Make someone feel seen — “Yes! That’s exactly how I feel!”

Novelty is what gives readers dopamine hits. You find novel ideas by pursuing your curiosity and noting what interests and surprises you along the way. If it intrigues you, it’ll likely intrigue your readers too.

In drafts two and beyond, I then rewrite these novel ideas to make them resonate. Resonance is when ideas take root in readers’ minds. It’s the art of capturing their imaginations and relating to their life experiences so that they feel.

Ideas resonate when they’re wrapped in:

• Stories
• Analogies
• Examples
• Authentic voice

In other words:

Writing Quality = Novelty x Resonance

That’s my writing framework.

And it starts with choosing your topic.