Ah, the misfits. (No, not these Misfits. Or these misfits. Or even these.) There are a lot of non-fiction books that aren’t informational, critical, procedural, or bloggial (hey! I coined a word! Me, Shakespeare and Sarah Palin...sigh). Let’s look at some of these other types of non-fiction books...below the fold.
To Tell the Truth is an 18-week mini-series exploring the practical side of non-fiction writing and publishing. The series outline is located here, and previous episodes may be found here. To Tell the Truth is published Monday evenings and is crossed posted at MélangePress.
For more writing and book diaries, visit Write On! on Thursdays, Bookflurries and What Are You Reading on Wednesdays, and Books by Kossacks.
As always, be certain to look at other books in your genre; the ones that are selling are doing it right. However, there are a few pointers I can offer that will get you on your way.
The Point Where the Misfits Meet: Creative Non-Fiction
The name covers a wide range of writing – essays, memoirs, biographies, and even informational writing. In some ways, I suppose, you could say all good non-fiction writing (outside of technical and procedural) is creative non-fiction; writing about your topic with a good narrative (see Shelby Foote
) makes it come alive. But when we think about creative non-fiction, we’re talking about something that’s a little more subjective, a little more narrative, a little more colorful. A great example is the writing of Oliver Sacks, whose personal experience with intriguing stories of neuroscience; contrast his work with the equally fascinating but much less creative writing of Louis Cozolino. Both talk about the same general topics, but where Cozolino is engagingly informational, Sacks weaves stories. Is one better or worse? Not to my mind – they serve different purposes.
There are dozens of books written about creative non-fiction, and if you’re interested in developing your writing in this genre, I recommend you at least peruse five or six of them. In these books, you will read things about deeper truths, subjectivity while maintaining objectivity, narrative, and focus. I can boil all of this down into one sentence: Creative non-fiction relays the facts AND tells truth; how you make that happen is up to you.
Memoir
This subgenre of creative non-fiction is is about your life. There seemed to be a flood of memoirs after Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes came out – everyone wanted to write a memoir. We saw some great ones, like Augusten Borroughs’ Running with Scissors, and some terrible ones, like James Frey’s Million Little Pieces. (A side note – I was working part time at our local library when that book came out; we never changed the label once the truth was revealed, but we did start shelving it in Fiction.)
There seem to be two keys to memoir:
- Just because everyone has a story doesn’t mean everyone should write a book. Consider long and hard if you have a compelling story that hasn’t been told but which might resonate with readers. For example, we have seen a million overcoming sexual abuse stories; however, one written by a minister about how the abuse led her TO ministry may be compelling.
- Keep it factual – as factual as you can to your recollection. We all have our perspectives on events – the story you tell about driving through Baltimore between the snowstorms last February has differences from the story your traveling companion tells. If you tell the story as though you drove when she actually did, it’s bad. If you tell the story and how you found it a lot funnier than she did, it’s okay. Also know that sometimes, we remember the sequence or the perception of events differently. Just don’t make stuff up. Trust me – it will come back to haunt you).
Essay/Column Collections
I talked a bit about this in last week’s T4 – collections are exactly that. What’s key is to know what the tie that binds might be; it might be personality (Molly Ivins), it might be topic (soldiers’ stories from the Civil War), it might be chronology (year of keeping kosher). There is the whole timeliness/timelessness issue – will these essays survive time? Do they have something to say beyond the particular current event they comment on? Or can you frame them to be a snapshot in time? Again, some of my thoughts from last week come into play here – it’s a delicate dance we do with time.
Spiritual/Religious Writing
There is a lot of spiritual writing that is not informational or analytical; in those types of spiritual writing, you are explaining or analyzing (or criticizing) a particular point of theology/dogma/practice. The kind of spiritual writing I’m talking about here may also be called ‘inspirational’ – it’s writing from your particular perspective, sharing your truths about life, love, the nature of God – answering the big and small questions from your point of view. This is the difference between the informational Chosen Faith: An Introduction to Unitarian Universalism by John Buehrens and the much more creative and inspirational Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott.
The real key here is to be clear about what it is you’re writing and why you’re writing it. Readers who think you’re going to be exploring the origins of goddess spirituality will be disappointed (and perhaps a bit put off) if you instead start offering pages of devotional texts and rituals. The title, your cover blurbs, and introduction should make your purposes clear. (That isn’t to say you can’t explore the origins in a book filled with devotional texts and rituals – but make it clear this is meant to be inspirational.)
Remember too that what makes inspirational writing work is that the author has trusted both their faith and their voice, and they have allowed their words to give voice to their spirit. Pardon me for waxing spiritual here for a moment – the topic allows, I suppose – but where it is important to trust your knowledge and perspective in other forms of non-fiction, it is important to trust your intuition here in spiritual non-fiction. Your writing will be more truthful to the inspiration you wish to convey.
Okay, enough of that spiritual stuff. Time for the jokes!
Humor
You may be wondering why I include humor in a discussion of non-fiction; our first instinct is to think about humor as made up – jokes, puns, sketches, and the like. However, there is plenty of humor in real life (see Reader’s Digest’s persistent Humor in Uniform and All in a Day’s Work columns). Humor can provide a different view of a topic, can call attention to the unusual, can even take the sting out or provide much needed comic relief. And cutting satire can get right to the heart of an issue/subject and (much like Stewart and Colbert), expose hypocricy and falsehoods.
A few things to remember:
- Make sure the basis of the humor is the facts, not a flight of fancy. (A good way to think about this is comparing it to fan fiction; the best fanfic maintains the characters, setting, and technologies of a particular book/movie/graphic novel/series, but it expands and explores. Does that make sense?)
- You should feel strongly about your topic – it’s hard to find the funny when you feel neutral about a subject.
- Make sure you know your subject well.
- Know your audience.
- Know the comic form you’re using and maintain it – whether it be parody, satire, narrative, etc. (It’s much like maintaining voice – something we’ll talk about in the T4 diary on Stylistics.)
- Know when to stop. You want to know what happens when you don’t? Watch SNL from the late 90s.
Travelogues
These books are one part procedural, one part informational, one part memoir. The best combine ‘how to get there’, ‘what’s there’ and ‘my experience there’ – with plenty of information for others who will follow your footsteps and an invitation to have their own similar experiences.
The biggest key? FACT CHECKING. If you’re going to write about travel, do it. Drive the roads. Visit the cafes. Talk to the people. Don’t fake it. It would be like the food writer who never tasted the food (or me, if I’d not stayed for all of Mrs Klein).
Also, don’t whitewash. If a place has a downside, mention it. You don’t want your readers to be disappointed and miss the beauty of what you saw. If there is a gorgeous view of Lake Ontario but you have to drive past strip mall heaven to get to it, mention that, or your readers may turn around in the McDonald’s driveway and never see what you saw.
What did I miss?
I’m certain there are some non-fiction genres I have missed; please mention them in the comments. But I think most non-fiction writing fits into the genres I’ve described over the last few weeks - and whatever form your book takes, it’s good to know you have choices when presenting your information.
So...
Now that our survey of genres is complete, we’ll move into a couple of general writing chapters – next week will be focused on turning classes, workshops, training, and seminars into books... then we’ll head into style and supporting materials. See you next week!
Cheers!