Writing Literary Nonfiction

This came up in one of the other threads - how many of us in this group are NOT fiction writers?

I ask because my writing interests lie in what is (somewhat irritatingly) called "creative nonfiction" or "literary nonfiction" - writing about real events, places and people using the techniques of literature. (The sort of thing that writers like E. B. White, John McPhee, Terry Tempest Williams, Ellen Meloy, and Ed Abbey do.)

I'm finding it frustrating as a writer to keep running into advice about things like how to come up with characters, or to create tension in one's plot, or making up believable places - because in each case I'm limited by the real people, events, and places I'm working with. I can tweak a bit, or shift emphasis, in order to promote my point of view, or to evoke certain moods or to call attention to the details I find important, but outright invention is, well, right out.

Yet on the other hand, all the books that purport to deal with writing nonfiction are all about how to query editors about your piece on the trucking industry, or your book on repairing computers or coping with in-laws at the holidays - not quite the same thing!

So, are there any other nonfiction writers out there, have you faced these problems too, and, if so, have you found any solutions?

(Fiction writers, feel free to chime in too, of course!)

I write about myself every day. I keep many different writing journals to help me get my thoughts down on paper. I hope to be able to look back on my life and be able to re-evaluate how I dealt with things, what was important to me then and what is important to me now.

Yeah, I find journaling a pretty essential thing - if I don't do it, I forget my life too easily!

(The two biggest challenges: points in my life where very little is happening, and ones where a lot is happening - the first because the days slide into one another, the second because there's a lot of pressure to not write.)

I also carry a small notebook around with me to jot down musings, and other little things I'd otherwise forget (including things like grocery lists). My partner once called it something like "a bastard stepchild of diary and to-do list." It has sketches in it too.

What I find challenging is rounding up those earlier observations and doing something productive with them. Sometimes it works really well, and sometimes I just end up staring at my notes wondering whether I'm really as boring as I look!

(I can see why traveling, or setting out to learn a new skill, are very good things for writers to do!)

I write both fiction and nonfiction. My first novel is currently out with an agent, and will hopefully be successful, but that aside, I've definitely had more success selling my nonfiction.

To me, the biggest issue with literary nonfiction is the question of how much fudging is allowed in the interest of creating a richly satisfying sense of story and character. I write on history, so there are many times when more research will not do the trick - the things I and my readers would like to know simply aren't known. I will use a certain amount of speculation when it seems justified by the known facts, but I always make it clear in the narrative when I'm speculating by using words like "perhaps," "may havë," "it's possible," etc. Not all writers of literary nonfiction do this, and I think that slides over into fiction in a way that is unfair to the reader.

There may be fewer markets out there for literary nonfiction than for the more workaday nonfiction, but someone who writes literary nonfiction well and accurately has an edge, because it's a difficult skill.

Philip Gerard has written a couple of books specifically geared toward literary nonfiction: Creative Nonfiction and Writing a Book that makes a Difference. Michael Larsen's How to Write a Book Proposal is helpful, and includes advice specifically directed toward literary nonfiction. One of the four sample proposals at the end is a literary memoir.

I do think some of the advice geared toward fiction can be extremely helpful for writers of literary nonfiction. In particular, the things I have learned in my fiction writing about scene structure and how to organize the flow of information in a story have been invaluable in my nonfiction writing. In both types of writing, it's critical to avoid bogging the reader down with a lot of backstory or static description, for example.

Ah, Ranaverde, i cannot come across your name without recalling the little green ones floating in the dew in the pockets of the banana leaf stems in the early morning. I write creative nonfiction, and like Abbey as well as Dillard, but would llike what you wrote better if you would not limit creative nonfiction to "writing about real events, places and people using the techniques of literature." There is a broader non-fiction of ideas, is there not?

My mother sent me the New Yorker when I was in Japan (for 20 yrs, scouting books, checking translations and writing non-fiction, none of which was journalism and all of which was creative in Japanese) and while the skill of the writers impressed me I found the articles were almost always what i would call fancy journalism and lacked the heart one finds in old English essays. When the novel was not the only accepted literature, which I feel is the case today (despite the nature essayists making a run at it, they petered out, didn't they?) So, you will find i call my brand of writing creative nonfiction that is NOT journalism.

And, as far as skill goes -- sure, it is great to have a huge vocabulary and the ability to craft complex flows of words without too many ifs ands and buts and there is not one day when i do not wish i could write better -- there are already more than enough good writers out there. Few, however, are well read. If you read and live widely, think about what you learn and, whenever possible grab hold of a single subject and hold on as tight as steer-rider only flying off to write it up when you fear you cannot go on without destroying your life, i'd want to read it.

Ranaverde:
Barbara Tuchman wrote a book Practising History which gives good advice to writers of all kinds. Ms. Tuchman is best known as a historian, but she is also a very readable writer.

Thanks for the tip, Marian. I didn't know about Tuchman's writing book, and will have to check it out.

@ ranaverde: I write both fiction and nonfiction, with the emphasis on nonfiction. I'd suggest taking a few psychology courses to understand human behavior and then sitting on a few park benches and observing people and situations around you.

To write either fiction or nonfiction, you have to understand two things: human behavior and human motivation. Once you can put yourself in other people's shoes without justifying their behavior, everything else falls into place. In both fiction and nonfiction, we all want to know one thing: why. Why do people do the things they do?

If you can explain the "why" to us in a why we can understand, you're well on your way...

> 1: Man, do I know the feeling!

Virtually everything I write is non-fiction . . . nearly all of it about history. Most of what I write, however, is in a category that doesn't have a name (not even an unsatisfying one, like "literary nonfiction"). My stuff (Imagining Flight is a fair example) is "academic" in that its analytical rather than narrative, but the style is consciously pitched to "general audiences" rather than academics.

Find advice on how to write it? I can't even find out what to *call* it! (Other than: "What would you call Blink and Plagues and Peoples and To Engineer is Human and Everything Bad Is Good for You? '______ '? OK, well, that's what I write . . . but Gladwell, McNeill, Petroski, and Johnson are way better at it than I am.")

Seriously, though, I suspect that the biggest reason that there isn't more advice out there on how to write non-fiction is that it's hard to give generic advice that's independent of the subject you're writing about and the approach you're taking to it. Fiction, regardless of genre or style, involves some common elements: plot, character, setting, viewpoint, motivation, etc. I'd be hard-pressed to name a similar set of common elements that would be shared by (say): What to Expect When You're Expecting, Truman, Basin and Range, and Blink.

"Writer-Readers II: Non-fiction," anyone?

I'd join!

The psychology thing sounds like a decent suggestion - though I tend to write more of what is inadequately called "nature writing" - much more on the personal philosophy combined with descriptive writing end of things.

I've also written history (_still_ trying to find a publisher for my manuscript, sigh) but there the goals are different. Still, I have hopes that I can someday get it to work (hopefully before the ideas in it become outdated).

ABVR - the closest match I've seen in terms of description I've seen is "literary nonfiction" or "creative nonfiction" which emphasizes a storytelling approach over, say, how-to. I'd say McPhee and Pollan and many of the other journalists-turned-authors count, and some of the more readable histories (including a few academic ones, though those are more rare than they ought to be). I think your book would fall in that category for me, though obviously, like the more history-ish books, it's more "nonfiction" than "literary."

(Maybe we should call them narrative nonfiction?)

It feels like there ought to be some sort of guidebook addressing this mode of writing, because I can easily point to several shelves worth of this sort of writing in my own library, and despite the differences of topic, approach and authorial voice, they do all read like kindred.

The lack of a clear public sense of it probably does play a role. I've learned that I have to hunt for these books in the store with a lot of persistence and creativity; I've found them in "Nature" and "Essays" and "Journalism" and "History" and "Popular Culture" and "Science" and... I think you get the idea!

Let real life be your inspiration, not your constraint. If one is writing about their family and the family includes a father, mother, four siblings, and two dogs, but for the tales the writer wants to tell, two of the siblings and one of the dogs doesn't enter the picture, they really don't need to be in the story at all. This seems counter-intuitive to nonfiction, but literary nonfiction and creative nonfiction is concerned with the story at hand, not the 100% re-telling of facts.

If you're looking for a good craft book, try Your Life as Story.

I'm posting to revive this thread. I've recently done an on-line course with U3A on Autobiography and Journaling. This Tristine Rainer book is referred to often. So last month I ordered it and today it arrived. I look forward to reading it, as well as re-reading all the previous 'talk' posts here.