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Writing Tips

Nonfiction Writers Must Delve Deep Into Their Characters’ Lives

Writing about People in Nonfiction
Intriguing people are at the heart of most stories and you need to know them intimately, whether you’re writing a community history, a travel piece, a memoir or a biography.

Hemingway advised writers to compile comprehensive information about their lead character’s personality and life. Only the tip of an iceberg of details will show in the final piece, he advised, but all of it informs your storytelling.

Compile Everything Known into a Chronological List

There are multiple benefits to such a list. It underscores gaps where more research is needed; and periods of intense accomplishments or duress (great story dynamics!) It may point to anomalies in this […]

Write clear, bold sentences in an ‘active voice’

Write Straight to the Point
The passive voice—with its side stepping, roundabout phrasing—lacks clarity, punch and immediacy. Many of us speak in this suggesting-things way, but when it slips into our writing it both deadens the impact and requires more words.

I know this, but in a bid to strike a conversational tone, a passive style sometimes slips into my writing and hides there, true to its obsequious nature, through multiple edits.

Like many Canadians, my initial attempts at an active writerly voice seemed brash, brazen and downright rude. But it’s not. It’s the basis of clear, forthright and succinct communication.
Examples of Passive and Active […]

Bring a flat character to life through a writing exercise

Get to Know Your Story Characters
Whether it’s a real person you’re writing about, or a fictional one, you need to know everything about her. The good and the bad qualities, the quirks and charms. Only the tip of the iceberg of information you gather will ever surface—to borrow Hemingway’s analogy—but it all comes to bear in the reactions and choices of a fully rounded person.
Pose Questions
If one of your characters seems flat, push for depth by answering these questions:

• How does she look and act (clothes, facial expressions, height, gestures, verbal ticks, habits, conversation)?

• What’s her social standing, class, education? […]

Family Story as Bestseller

Two Great Reads That Draw on Family Stories
Does your family’s history have the drama needed for a wide readership?

The answer lies not in content but in your ability to find its story threads, the glowing strands that have relevance and insights for others. That’s a tall order—often requiring multiple rewrites to get distance and objectivity, overcome familial objections, and to filter genealogical minutia. But there are a growing number of writers who are doing just that to gain an international following.

Here’s two widely different examples: the novel Postmark Bayou Chene by Gwen Roland, and The Juggler’s Children, creative nonfiction by Carolyn Abraham.
Postmark Bayou Chene
This is […]

Lifelike writing to engage readers’ minds

Showing Versus Telling in Your Writing
There are two different narrative modes: the breezy, dash through background information or set up, in which the narrator tells us what’s happening—and sometimes even what to think. The advantage here is the ability to move fast through subject matter and time.

But to engage a reader’s full attention specifics are needed, complete with sensory details and dialogue or, in nonfiction, quotes. Writers offer snippets of showing within the general narrative flow or fully unleash its dramatic effect within scenes. That’s showing, and for those new to creative writing—as opposed to correspondence or term papers—this form must be mastered. The goal […]

Writing a Setting into the Story

The Role of Settings in Fiction & Creative Nonfiction
The setting might be of minimal importance in a story that focusses upon a character’s inner struggles, as in Nuala O’Faolain’s creative nonfiction biography Chicago May. Or place may be so important it takes on the importance of a character, as in Michael Crummy’s Sweetland, with a protagonist who remains behind when his remote island home is abandoned.
Does the setting play a major role in your story?
If setting is key to your narrative, use its drama to flesh out your theme (the essential core idea of your story). The landscape, weather or season, or a specific […]

Writing About History

The Art of History, Unlocking the Past in Fiction & Nonfiction, Christopher Bram
Books about writing history are hard to find, so this new addition to the canon is a prize—in every sense. The Art of History is a slim volume that packs a lot of punch.

Christopher Bram is a passionate consumer of history, and a writer of both fiction and nonfiction. His homage to the subject covers all the dynamics of craft, from story structure to the use of details. And scattered throughout is an eclectic mix of fiction and nonfiction examples, because “they’re two sides of the same mountain.” Bram unpacks these […]

Good Writing Requires Great Storytelling

What is a “Story”?
Think of a favourite family story. You’ve heard that tale repeatedly but it never fails to bring a gasp or a laugh.

Now—deconstruct that story. It’s not likely to be a memory of a picnic on a perfect  summer day, when everything went right. The gripper, the one everyone remembers and wants to hear again, hinges on a problem. In fact, it probably follows a series of escalating calamites–after which nothing is ever the same again for the people involved.

That’s a story. It revolves around people we’re interested in. The protagonist of the piece wants something, but everything goes awry. She […]

A Story Structure Guides Readers

Story Structure Gives Readers a Path to Follow
Whether it’s a novel or a fact-based essay, your story needs a structure, a logical flow that’s like a winding path through a wilderness of ideas and details. Readers want assurance there’s a clear direction for this journey.

Structure is an integral part of the planning process, flowing out of your premise and theme. (For more on theme see: http://thescribes.ca/a-theme-provides-a-focus-for-writing/)
What Does a Story Structure Look Like?
Marion Road Smith, in The Memoir Project, cites Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, a memoir of self-discovery, as a book with a clear structure. It has 108 chapters (the number of […]

Write a More Convincing Scene

Show Readers What’s Happening

Give Them the Details So They Can Draw Their own Conclusions
Readers want to be active participants in the story—to draw their own conclusions, rather than simply be told what the narrator thinks. So for passages or scenes where you want full engagement, give them the specific and sensory details. Paint the scene in full colour.

One of my summer reads was Elizabeth Gaskell’s classic Victorian novel North and South. Gaskell was a master storyteller, with convincing characters and gripping plots, but the impact would have been stronger still with less telling and more showing.
Examples of How […]