How to Make Your Non-Fiction More Engaging: Advice From Your Favorite Writers
All good writing should have a strong rhythm and flow. A subtle seduction that draws readers in, quietly and quickly, so by the time they realise they’ve been drawn in, well, they’re in. Excellent writing keeps them ‘in’ until the very last delicious word.
As a prolific reader, I know finding that intensely satisfying feeling (usually wrapped heavily in ‘oh no it’s over!’ sentiments) isn’t that easy to come by. But it’s so worth it when you do. It happens in every genre, and non-fiction is no different.
No matter what you write or your subject matter, within non-fiction, your goal is the same as any writing: to entice the reader to spend time with you. They need to feel that pull from the first few pages, to become invested in the story you need to tell. There should be a sense of urgency to the telling - something that keeps them coming back.
It might sound intimidating, but as a writer, you know what I’m talking about. You’ve read the books I’m talking about and if you haven’t you need to get back out there and read some more.
Non-fiction isn’t just a story - it’s your story. You need to tell it with all the emotion and passion it deserves. This is your life. Why are you telling it? Why does it need to come out? How is it serving you and how will it serve others?
Think back to the books that enraptured you. How did they leave you? Elated? Connected? High? Low?
How did they make you feel?
Aim to do the same.
Keep it tight, but tell it all. The reader isn’t a mind-reader, fill in the blanks and if necessary, tell the back story, but again — keep it tight. The secret to engaging nonfiction is always in the telling. The best nonfiction I’ve read illuminates and resonates. They focus on more than simply just telling a story; they create an experience for the reader that stays with them long after finishing the final sentence.
I’m happy to give you all this advice knowing full well it’s something I’m yet to get entirely comfortable with. Engaging nonfiction involves breaking down a barrier or two. It invites the dirty, the gritty, the unpleasant onto the page and you, the writer, have to show the reader why it matters. Why it matters to you and why it now matters to them. Engaging nonfiction is rarely fluffy and pleasant.
It’s human.
To finish, I’ll share a few of my favourite quotes about writing nonfiction from some fellow humans:
“Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing. Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolours. Every stroke you put down, you have to go with. Of course, you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing.”
Joan Didion
“The notion that anything can be invented wholly and that these invented things are classified as 'fiction' and that other writing, presumably not made up, is called 'nonfiction' strikes me as a very arbitrary separation of things.”
James Salter
“I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have; they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect.”
George R.R. Martin
“You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.”
Octavia E. Butler
“I always worked until I had something done, and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way, I could be sure of going on the next day.”
Ernest Hemingway
“The challenge for a nonfiction writer is to achieve a poetic precision using the documents of truth but somehow to make people and places spring to life as if the reader was in their presence.”
Simon Schama
“The competitions between fiction and nonfiction, short and long, electronic and paper, are not battles in which there can be only one victor. After all, we exist in a world where more kinds of writing than ever are greeted with interest and enthusiasm.”
Celeste Ng
“There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative.”
E. L. Doctorow
