Tuesday, April 23, 2013

You need to tell a story in non-fiction

By Dennis Mellersh

To write an effective non-fiction book that will hold the interest of your readers, you need to tell a story in your book, just as you would if you were writing a novel.

Research on learning has shown that people will remember the content of any instructional material (such as your non-fiction book) much better if they hear or read a story about it.
 
Basically, all good writing is, in some way, telling a story. In your case, the “story” is the narrative you construct around the ideas and facts you want to convey to your readers in your non-fiction material.
 
This does not mean that you need to write your book as if it were a novel or a short story, but it does mean that you need to use a story-like narrative voice in your writing.
 
This is obvious if you are writing a biography, or a history book, but it also holds true for how-to-do-it books and other instructional books. You need to modify the traditional narrative curve of fiction and use it to make your non-fiction book a more compelling read for your audience.
 
This might look something like this in order of presentation of the material that your book will discuss:
  • Outlining the main theme of the content
  • Describing briefly the subsets of the theme
  • Your ideas/facts as the main body of the book
  • Review of main principles and conclusion
To achieve a narrative voice, write the content of your book as if you were talking personally to someone who is interested in your ideas and knowledge of the topic. 

Writing like you talk, as if you were telling a story will not only make your book much more appealing to readers, it will also help your readers to better remember the information in your book.
 
This will help establish your reputation with readers as a reliable and interesting source of material on the non-fiction topics that interest them.

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