Narrative Non-fiction

As a writer narrative is an important part of my work and finding new ways of driving it is often a challenge. I'm always up for new ideas and help, also old ideas that I've forgotten or not used for a while. I deal mainly with fiction but have always been intrigued by autobiography and biography and did a dissertation on Margery Kempe's autobiography for my BA. I believed then, and still do, that most of our writing is fiction anyway because we select the incidents and shape them to suit our purpose. So when a non-fiction workshop was organised by Booktown Writers in Wigtown at The Urr valley Hotel, Castle Douglas on Friday 7 June 2013 I went along.

It was an excellent workshop run by Stuart Kelly and the participants were entertained, informed, stretched and enagaged by Stuart's delivery and wealth of knowledge. The main thrust of the day was to look at ways of writing narrative/creative non-fiction and the group were posed an important question to consider before writing -

Why are YOU telling me THIS?

 ie what is so special about you (authority/knowledge) and why do I want to read about this? (topic)

After a few enjoyable exercises re-writing the narrative order of the Wizard of Oz and writing positive and negative obituaries for people like Jimmy Saville and Margaret Thatcher, it was concluded that non-fiction differs very little from fiction. It requires narration the same as fiction and choices have to be made as to whether the narrative is linear or chopped up. To be successful it should also be written from a point of authority, be empathic, sincere, original and enthusiastic. Tone is equally important as it conveys the narrator's attitude to the story and characters, and this is determined by word choice.

So what does all that mean for me and how does it inform my fiction writing?

It gave me lots to think about again regarding my own characters - how much do I like/dislike them? How do I show this? Are they 3-Dimensional and paradoxes? Does my narrative reveal too much too soon? Does it 'flow' even though it has a chopped up sequence of events? What makes it original?

All of these things any good writer would consider but what I find about attending workshops is not so much in what new things I learn but what I remember about what I already know. It's good to be reminded  every now and again.

 Further reading was recommended:
Stuart, a Life Backwards by Alex Masters looks at narrative moving backwards in time
The Trouble with Tom by Paul Collins is an example of presenting a well-know character, Tom Payne (The Rights of Man)
Samuel Foot by Ian Kelly is the story of Samuel Foot as well as the story about how Ian Kelly found his story