Livelier Non-fiction - Shelby Hearon - The Writer Dec 08

Readers want the taste, teh flavour of the real thing. To know what is was like to be where that other person was. Read these stories as true as if they had happened to us.

1. Making the real come alive
3 skills - emotional response (love, revenge, ambition, guilt, grief), careful selection of detail and authenticity of setting.



2. Establishing place
After readers glimpse true feelings of the writer's heart, take reader by the hand and place him or her in the setting where the story unfolds.
Let the reader know who the antagonists are, where they come from, who the rivals are of the people on this farm, pageant or rodeo.


3. Layering in the details
After getting the reader to that porch, Cow Palace etc, and they know how the author feels about being there, who are the bad guys and good guys, old v. young ones, our team v. theirs), the last step is to select from the action that follows the specific, revealing details that will show the place best. Let the reader see best what there is to see from his ringside seat. The damp hands before the fight? The nockout? The dark hall afterward? All 3? But not every action and reactin in between.

Differences between fiction and non-fiction. The plot in fiction, writer must invent facts readers will believe. In NF, writer has all the facts and has to arrange them into a plot for the readers. But for both, the ultimate question the reader will ask: Does it ring true?