how to end a nonfiction narrative essay

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Writing the Perfect Conclusion for your Nonfiction Book

September 27, 2017 By Nina Amir 10 Comments

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I always say my authors “activate” in fall. They have spent their summers writing their books and then, inevitably, pop into my inbox in the first few weeks of September with freshly completed manuscripts. Their excitement to get the book off to their editor shows—but not always in a good way.

I always can tell when an author is just ready to be done writing. The final chapters get shorter and more similar in structure, and then the book ends in a conclusion that’s two pages long and sums up the book quickly before simply ending .

Conclusions often end up short and short-changed because writers feel they have nothing left to say. In a way, they are right: the bulk of the important ideas should be included in the main body of your book. But that doesn’t mean that the last chapter needs to be one that says nothing.

The conclusion can do a lot of interesting work to tie up the reading experience for the reader. It can help them think about the bigger implications of your story, the next steps they can take, or the lessons that they can learn from what they’ve read.

If you’re stuck on how to make your conclusion reach its potential, there is some good news: conclusions don’t need to be wildly innovative to make their mark. There are some basic formulas you can follow in creating a conclusion that wrap up your work in a meaningful way.

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Conclusion #1: The “Where are They Now” Conclusion

In a ‘where are they now’ conclusion, the author talks about their or their subject’s current life after having undergone the journey discussed in the book. This type of conclusion works best with memoir or autobiography, but it can also work for biography or a kind of narrative involving multiple characters going through a concrete event.

If you use this type of conclusion, be careful not to just include a rote summary of what everyone’s doing; dive in to how the events in the book link up to your or the subject’s present-day experience.

Conclusion #2: The “Why Should We Care” Conclusion

This type of conclusion is the most common one I see, and that’s because it’s so effective. This kind of conclusion steps out from the close focus of the book to explore the bigger picture into which the book fits. In a journalistic story, it’s a chance to say how the stories in a book fit in to a larger trend and why that trend is important. In a history or other more discursive book, the conclusion is a place to explain how the topic discussed in the book illuminates new information and unveils new ways of looking at a particular subject.

The important thing to keep in mind with this kind of conclusion is that you want to avoid being repetitive, as you may have discussed the “so what” of your argument in your introduction or in scattered places throughout the book. If you find yourself in this position, my general advice is to examine the implications of the book more fully in the conclusion and change earlier discussion of those implications to be more succinct.

Conclusion #3: The “What Do We Do Now?” Conclusion

A “what do we do now” conclusion works well in how-to or advice books. If you are writing a book about getting involved in politics as a young person, for instance, you could write a conclusion that gives distilled real-world tips on how someone could get involved. If you are writing a book on how to do something that follows a standard process (say, writing nonfiction books) then the conclusion could be the final step in the process, or getting started again after going through the process once.

Conclusion #4: The “Artsy Cliffhanger” Conclusion

In memoirs, journalistic narratives, or true-crime books, there might not be a clear, solid ending to a narrative. The mystery hasn’t been solved; you (the memoirist) conquered your demons a little but not all the way; the international crisis in Africa you witnessed is still ongoing. In these cases, it could be interesting to take a more artistic approach and end the book with a story that shows there is not yet a resolution to the story.

This can be a moving ending, but take care to add in extra “so what” narration if it is not immediately clear why you are not adding in a more resolute conclusion to the book.

Conclusion #5: The Combo Method

As you might guess, sometimes just following one of these conclusion approaches won’t quite be enough for your book. In these cases, experiment with combining two or more approaches. A “where are they now” structure can be the story that makes up your “artsy cliffhanger” conclusion; a “why should we care” conclusion can take the form of a “what do we do now” ending. Above all, you should think about your readers: what would they want or need before ending the book? The conclusion is really for them.

As I’ve said before on this blog, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to writing any part of a book; what type of conclusion you have can vary by the kind of book you are writing and what you want to ultimately say. But what does matter is that you have one in the first place. Like I’ve said with introductions , take care to put together a good conclusion—you owe it to your readers to keep them engaged until the very end of the book.

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October 7, 2018 at 8:52 am

Yes I too believe that conclusion is as important as is the introduction. Conclusion can have some more related resources and sum up of everything but not the repetition.

June 25, 2019 at 6:44 pm

Thank you so much for such helpful guidance. I had already written my book – conclusion and all and, like so many, I thought I was done. I stepped away from it for a while and a little more research extended the thesis in a much more meaningful way. I then wrote the conclusion again then, I wondered had I gone too far and maybe gone into related areas that had only been mentioned throughout the other chapters. I did a Google search and ended up reading this article. It turned out that I had essentially used (unbeknowst to myself) THE COMBO METHOD “where are they now” structure (or, in my case: where is the situation now), with a springling of “artsy cliffhanger”, a major coating of, “why should we care” followed by, “what do we do now” ending. And I considered my readers at this point quite considerably. This confirmed that I was instinctively on the right track and thanks to your article, I now how the tools to all my conclusions and customise the advice accordingly. The most important part of the advice of course, is to recognise that even when you think you have finished – that you maybe haven’t and, as I found in my own experience, by revisiting the conclusion – I had something much more profound to say, It was the bigger picture as you describe it and this seems to only come by taking a big step back from all that you have slaved over so lovingly and passionately – so that you as the writer actually get the significance of what you have just written. Thank you so much again.

July 1, 2019 at 10:53 pm

So glad you found the post, Maria, and that it was hepful.

November 17, 2019 at 4:49 pm

Can a case study to validate the thesis be part of a conclusion? Or should it come before a conclusion, or after?

January 6, 2020 at 3:55 pm

I would do it long before a conclusion.

August 14, 2019 at 7:38 am

Writing my first book and needed help with a conclusion. Your suggestions were timeless!

August 27, 2019 at 11:39 am

Glad the post was timely for you!

October 14, 2019 at 8:19 am

I needed that so much to he;p me get a 100 A+.

THANK YOU!!!.

November 22, 2019 at 5:47 am

Hello Nina, Thank you for your many wise words to all who are passionate about words and putting them together correctly to help describe the vents of the story unfolding before the readers own eyes. At the request of my eldest daughter, I have been writing a book (nonfiction) about events of my own life which saw me not only imprisoned at a particular time in my life (almost forty years ago now) but also put onto life support as a consequence of the new living environment I found myself in at that same time,and trying to survive in, on a day by day, hour by hour existence. I found it very hard to write this book as in doing so I seemingly re-lived many unpleasant and hurtful events in my own mind. Where to now though? It is a massive story and I do not want to put too much detail about it into an open letter that others may see and read. I would dearly like to ask a couple of questions of you with regards to what to and where to from here? Is it possible that you might respond to give me a guiding suggestion? I would be very appreciative and would be open to share with you an absolutely massive story about an event in time which has never been told by anyone, to anyone. No media interview has ever been conducted and I am the only person out of the three people involved in this event (almost forty years ago) who is still alive and who can tell the story about what actually did happen. That is why my daughter asked me to document it all whilst i was still alive. I am currently sixty one years old. (2019) Infamous these events and this story are; definitely NOT ‘famous’ but historical and TRUE CRIME none the less. I was one who the system decided to make a public example of, … and continues to do so all of these years later. It was a matter of property and NOT one of people. I did not harm at any time, man, Woman or child, nor did I break into anybody’s private home, corner shop, department store or harm the family cat or dog. None the less, a whipping boy I was made, and I have been constantly lashed by the opinions of others who some were not even alive at the time, yet make judgement s of events they could not know about; .. simply because I have never discussed them with anybody. They look at the headline only, and not the story behind the headlines. It is indeed a fascinating story. I await your reply. With respect Stay well, God Bless Steve Mannix Australia.

January 6, 2020 at 3:54 pm

Why not contact me for a free 15-minutes session? Go here: https://ninaamir.as.me/15-min-strategy-session

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Story Craft

May 19, 2023, endings: how to leave readers satisfied ~ and wanting more, in narrative elements 4, lauren kessler pays practical attention to the oft-neglected challenge of story endings.

By Lauren Kessler

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the final post in our focused series on the core elements of narrative by nonfiction writer and teacher Lauren Kessler. Previous posts provided an overview of the power of narrative,  how to build a story through scenes and how to report and write memorable characters .

Why did the author think she had to wrap it up with a bow? Why do we who write nonfiction, who work as (or are learning to become) narrative journalists, often feel compelled to create a tidy package to deliver to the reader? Why is it such a struggle to write ourselves to a satisfying ending?

Here’s a thought, courtesy of one of the finest writers of narrative nonfiction: “It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.”  That’s Joan Didion beginning one of her most memorable essays, “Goodbye to All That.”

Didion is writing about the beginning and end of a love affair — hers, with the city of New York — but I think it is an equally wise statement about writing. It is easier to know when and where to start than when and where to finish.  And because of that, it is easier to write good beginnings than it is to craft good endings.

More in the Narrative Elements series

• Narrative as a sum of its parts
• Reporting and writing scenes
• Developing character
• Today: Effective endings

I don’t think it’s particularly mysterious that we struggle with endings. The final pages or paragraphs or even sentences of a story carry extraordinary weight. They can and should leave a lasting impression on the reader and often determine the overall success of the narrative. That is a lot of pressure. This could be why some endings seem forced or contrived. We must make our point! We must tie up loose ends! This is our last chance.

The challenge of endings may also be a matter of focus. Throughout the thinking, reporting and organizing phases of a piece of writing — everything we do before sitting down to actually write — we often concentrate on how and where our story will begin. We narrative journalists are suckers for a great opener. The lead — or lede, as some prefer — is the most important part of the story. We obsess over what that first sentence will be, that opening scene, that initial snippet of dialog, that quotable quote. That’s good.

But all that focus on beginnings means less, or in my cases no, concentration on endings.

Obstacles to a good ending

Some writers cling to the myth that once they figure out how to begin a story, the rest will just “fall into place.” Sometimes the magic happens. Often, not so much. Endings generally don’t miraculously materialize. And the danger of thinking (or hoping) they will means not devoting enough thought to them at the beginning .

The mechanics of the writing process can also stand in the way of creating a memorable ending. If we’re not batting out something on deadline and have a few days, or even a few weeks, to craft a piece, consider how that works. We invariable come back to the story by re-reading it. We read, re-read and then, of course, edit, and polish the beginning. Again and again. By the end of the process, we may have burnished and refined the opening paragraphs five, six perhaps a dozen times. But the ending — the last scene, the last paragraph, the last sentence we write — is the least edited. Of course it isn’t as strong.

And let’s not forget the hallowed “inverted pyramid.” Many narrative journalists, myself included, learned to write in journalism school , where we were taught that the way to organize a story was from most important element to least.  Using this model, we pyramid-veterans might end the story when we run out of material important enough to include or, frankly, when we run out of allowed room or time.  In other words, there is no ending — no considered, crafted way to bring a story to a close.

Thinking of stories as a whole

What to do? Maybe these suggestions will help:

The first is conceiving of the story as a story , by which I mean a narrative, a tale, rather than a coherently ordered collection of information . Stories have beginnings, middles, and ends, all of which are important and purposeful and carefully molded.  Once we frame an assignment as a story rather than a report, we immediately become attuned to endings. The news feature that was going to be a serviceable piece about a facility that helps feed the food-insecure becomes a vignette- and scene-powered story. When I approached “Shelter from the Storm” this way, letting the vignettes tell the story, the ending vignette was obvious.

Second suggestion is this: Although it is a mistake to believe that once we figure out how to begin a story, the rest (including the ending) will spontaneously generate, it is not outside the realm of possibility that the material we have gathered will lead to an ending as we write. The key is that we have conceived of the piece as a story and conducted our reporting to gather that kind of material. This is not “go with the flow” advice. It is, in fact, pro-active. It is being alert and attentive to the narrative structure, reporting with narrative needs in mind, then watching it from the outside even as we are writing it from the inside.

Occasionally a story will naturally and neatly conclude: the “and they all lived happily (or unhappily) ever after” variety. I don’t mean to imply that these kinds of endings are always trite but that they are definitive and conclusive — and, in real life, rare. Other stories naturally end in a mystery, a question unanswered, a conflict unresolved or unresolvable. Some narratives fold in on themselves or come full circle. When I wrote a piece about my love-hate relationship with the potato , the story began in the potato fields of Long Island with my mother cursing the volunteer spuds in our backyard garden and ended with me, 50 years later, embracing the diversity of the lowly spud and choosing to plant it in my garden. My most recent book, “Free,” which examines the challenges of reentry after long-time incarceration, opens when one man is released from prison, leaving behind a fellow prisoner, a close friend and mentor. It ends when the other man, three years later, finally gains his freedom. The two releases act as narrative bookends.

Here’s the third idea that may help illuminate the path to a good ending: Focus on the readers. We offer stories in the hopes that our readers will learn and care and question, empathize, sympathize, laugh, get angry. We write for them. And so, when contemplating how to end a story or when scrutinizing the ending we’ve written, it makes sense to ask:

• Does this ending deliver what I promised the reader at the beginning?
• Does this ending leave the reader with a sense of time well spent?
• Does this ending leave the reader smarter?
• Does this ending leave the reader with something to think about?

The contrived ending often does not. The tidy-little-package ending often does not. The non-ending ending (ran out of good material) often does not.

Ambiguity in endings ~ as in life

There are alternatives. Consider the power of a scene as an ending device. This can be a scene that captures the essence of the story or brings the narrative full circle — like the end scene in “Free” — or that presents a sort of cliff-hanger, leaving the reader to wonder and want to read more.

There is a difference between leaving the reader wanting more (curious, engaged) and leaving the reader unsatisfied (confused, cheated). When I was struggling with how to end my exploration of middle school, teen girl culture, and parenting a 21 st century teen in “My Teenage Werewolf,” I knew the natural conclusion to the story was the end of middle school. But there was no tidy ending to the issues raised by the narrative. And so, in the final scene, at the eighth-grade graduation dance, the reader is left not with a “well, that’s over” feeling but rather wondering “what happens next?”

Ending with a conversation among the characters in the story or with one character’s monolog can also create a meaningful ending.

I also think there is a place for what I’ll call the “transparent” ending. This is when the writer admits, in exposition, that this story doesn’t have an ending. The crisis continues. The relationship remains unstable. The goal has not been reached. The jury is still out. It is a candid admission to the reader, whom you have taken along for the ride, that there’s no grand finale here. This can be the only credible and honest way to end.

Reader validation

I like to imagine my ideal reader.  She is sitting in her favorite chair thoroughly absorbed in my article. She comes to the final few paragraphs. They bring the story into focus for her. They leave her with ideas worth pondering, with an image she’ll remember.  She nods to herself, then sits for a long moment before she reaches for her phone. “Let me tell you about this piece I just finished reading,” she says to her friend.

Lauren Kessler  is an Oregon-based narrative journalist, teacher and author of 15 nonfiction books.

How to Earn the Ending

What writers can learn from video game developers

I have a vivid memory of sitting next to my childhood best friend on her plaid couch, watching her older brother conquer his most recent video game obsession. The game, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time , centered around a protagonist named Link, who must defeat Ganondorf, the evil ruler of a tribe that had taken over the kingdom of Hyrule. As with previous versions of Zelda, the game progressed through battles, but this edition also had a music-making element, as Link (and, by extension, the player) learned to play songs on a magical ocarina that conferred special powers.

It was the first video game that ever enthralled me, and we sat there for hours, watching the colorful, digitized mossy green and gold world unfold over the swirl of hair on my friend’s brother’s head. My friend’s mom would ask why we wanted to watch someone else play a game rather than play it ourselves. As a kid, I couldn’t explain.

Now, I’d be able to answer her question eloquently: I was drawn into the beauty of the design and the music, but was also entranced by a line of inquiry: what exactly was happening in this game? What monsters and characters lurked around the next corner? The game inspired trust: it was clear there would be a satisfying end to the story.

As an adult, I do occasionally play video games—mainly simulation games, a recent favorite being Untitled Goose Game —but I’ve never identified as a gamer. More than the games themselves, or actual gameplay, I find myself fascinated by video game psychology and culture. I’ve been known to binge-watch YouTube walkthroughs of games I can’t master on my own, like BioShock Infinite . And, as a nonfiction writer, I’m mostly drawn to storytelling games.

The connection between creative nonfiction and video games is one that feels obvious to me. After all, as in narrative nonfiction, the heart of the story in a video game must be carved out through hours, sometimes days, of engagement. Like memoirs, critically acclaimed games often require players to untangle a complicated internal terrain and grapple with character strengths and flaws. The ending must be earned.

Video game developers and marketers have spent a lot of time and money studying gamers and their motivations, and therefore have a strong sense of what compels gamers to choose one game over another . Quantic Foundry , a marketing company that specializes in collecting and analyzing “psychometric methods and data from over 400,000 gamers to develop an empirical model of gamer motivations,” divides their findings into the following categories and subcategories: action (destruction/excitement), social (competition/community), mastery (challenge/strategy), achievement (completion/power), immersion (fantasy/story), and creativity (design/discovery). Though their services and models are geared toward video game development professionals, their blog in particular contains a treasure trove of insights about how, where, and why we engage with games. Quantic Foundry analyzes demographic breakdowns by a variety of factors: gender identity, age, gamer skill level, the mindset of players who prefer male over female protagonists, and beyond. They point out discrepancies in how we define genres and gameplay (including the fascinating divide surrounding what “hardcore gaming” means ). Visitors to the site can even take a quiz that will break down their “gamer motivation profile,” answering precisely what factors will pull them into a video game world (for me, it’s primarily story, fantasy, and design).

So what can all of this data and interpretation of gamer motivation tell us about creative nonfiction readers?

Video games often utilize the same tools we writers employ in narrative nonfiction: a tension, a quest, a line of inquiry, a sense of suspense, and, at the end, some sort of reconciliation if not satisfaction. As a writer and writing instructor, thinking about creative nonfiction as an interactive activity not only helps to ground my understanding of the reader’s engagement, but also helps me to home in on what’s important in my work: the questions motivating readers to turn the page, the stakes keeping them engaged, the knowledge they gain at the end that makes the reading worth it. It’s one thing to sit down and write a narrative about truths that are difficult and can only fit into a creative approach to nonfiction; it’s another to consider how, or why, a reader might want to discover those truths along with me. What motivates a reader to sit down and follow a writer’s tension and line of inquiry? And what can we, as writers, give our readers to create a sense of satisfaction (or perhaps dissatisfaction)?

 It seems to me that, especially when revising our work, we need to be articulating for ourselves what our readers might approach us for. Adventure and rule-breaking? A world they can build upon? A battle they can take part in alongside us? A work that allows them to create something?

Of course, readers’ motivations aren’t always obvious, and while gamers’ motivations may be distilled into categories, that doesn’t mean they may not seek a different genre of game sometimes. Reading and gaming are, at the end of the day, just variations of escapism and ways to control how we want to engage with the world. For example, some readers enjoy true crime creative nonfiction and video games because they enjoy the sight of blood and gore, or want to play out a violent urge of their own, but other true crime readers may be drawn in by the mystery or to learn more about a crime. As a reader, I love nonfiction mystery narratives that are told in creative ways—books such as I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara (which followed the author’s obsessive journey to identify the notorious serial rapist and murderer nicknamed the Golden State Killer) and Jane: A Murder by Maggie Nelson (a collection of poetry, found documents, and memoir fragments the author pieces together to come to terms with her aunt’s unsolved murder).

McNamara and Nelson both spin stories, but not just the facts about a crime; they present evidence as well as the experience of investigation. They invite readers to tag along, encountering clues while designing alternative stories of what might have happened. There’s even a dark fantasy element in the act of imagining these murder scenes. Grim as that might be, this forced act of imagination is key: what we envision is all the more horrifying because it’s based in unresolved mystery and loose ends. We’re left with possible answers, potential realities that cannot be confirmed or denied. (Both crimes were unsolved at the time of the books’ writing.) These are stories we can revisit and reconsider over time.

This is not to say that McNamara or Nelson edited with their readers’ tastes in mind, but rather that they had to have a sense of what might motivate readers to pick up their story among all others. One could argue that Truman Capote, a forefather of the true crime genre, framed his own work perfectly by calling his masterpiece In Cold Blood a “nonfiction novel.” What began as an experiment to see if he could fit the reported story of a murdered family in Kansas into the structure of a novel set a precedent for an entire subgenre of nonfiction. By conjuring up the shape of a novel, he let readers know what to expect. The frame also provided a kind of distance from the brutal crimes Capote rendered, despite the controversies surrounding the liberties he may have taken while writing.

McNamara’s narrative expectations were less obvious—perhaps because she passed away before her manuscript’s completion—but the book was labeled an “obsessive search.” In many ways, she offered her readers just that: a window into obsession, both her own and that of the detectives still trying to solve the mystery decades later. She invited readers into a labyrinth of clues, tips, and red herrings, and theories ran like water. If I were to categorize the book as a game, its interactive features would be the means by which the narrative engages the reader as part of the team solving the puzzle and interacting with evidence (albeit indirectly).

If I apply this thinking to games I love, I can see overlaps. I love games that feature an unconventional mystery. I recently found myself hooked on Night in the Woods , in which the protagonist, a recent college dropout who committed a mysterious crime in high school, returns to her hometown. Upon her return, a disturbing new crime spree begins, which leads her to investigate who might be behind the violent attacks. While solving the crime is a satisfying task for the recent dropout, it is also the vehicle for the protagonist to make commentary on issues of class, education, and the way trauma colors how we relate to others. There’s some violence and blood, but it’s minimal and beside the point. The gameplay isn’t difficult, which leaves energy to focus on the larger ideas that inform the gameplay. The dialogue between the player and other game characters is witty, hilarious, sharp, and, at times, heartbreaking. The game’s developers have created a vivid, vibrant world where every character has a stake in the outcome. Playing the game, I felt as though the rich and complicated storyline was familiar narrative-wise, if not game-wise. In this way, Night in the Woods is not unlike a novella or a longer narrative essay. The game provides access to complicated tensions through a narrative thread.

These parallels aren’t necessarily by accident. We can’t assume that video games haven’t adapted storytelling strategies from narrative nonfiction. In fact, many video games are based on actual historical or autobiographical events in the video game developers’ lives. Take, for example, That Dragon, Cancer , which follows the experience of a family whose youngest son is diagnosed with terminal cancer. As a player, you’re forced to interact with this family’s story, but nothing you do will change the outcome: your son will still die. The game is based on developer Ryan Green and his family’s experience; he, his wife, and his children all voice their own characters. One could argue that this was the best, most engaging way to tell the truth of what losing a young son to a terminal illness is like: it forces you to go through the motions of being a parent to this child; it forces you to feel helpless, vulnerable, adrift. Even when the game delves into visual abstraction or fantastical imagery, what the player experiences via the game is the truth of Green’s grief. This is what the best art—in any form—can do: allow us to experience a feeling that’s grounded in something true, however troubling or difficult to grasp.

Creative nonfiction allows us to tell truths about ourselves that don’t fit neat categories. Isn’t that a version of truthful fantasy or escapism in and of itself? Creative nonfiction allows us as writers to be playful in how we divulge, interpret, and navigate truths. It allows readers a meaningful way to engage with how we see the world, which in turn only makes us more empathetic. But as writers, perhaps we can do more to classify what our readers’ experience with our texts might be. Can we be more specific about our searches, our obsessions, our quests? Are there ways we can acknowledge the mask we allow our readers to wear when reading our nonfiction so they can see the world the way we do? By thinking about how we package and label our own stories, we may be better able to reach our readers or, perhaps, articulate what we want to impart to them.

A few years after I entertained myself watching someone else play Ocarina of Time , I had the opportunity to play another chapter in the Zelda series for myself: The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask . Like any successful epic, Link’s journey is never fully resolved in the Zelda franchise. In Majora’s Mask , Link has three days to save an alternate reality from a moon that is about to crash into the kingdom. This creepy, leering, pockmarked moon glares down at you from the sky as you play and inches ever closer. A unique feature of this installment in the Zelda series is Link’s ability to use masks to turn into other creatures and characters, taking on their powers to his advantage. Quite literally, the game asks the player to take on the role of someone else to save the world.

So what motivated me to save this hypothetical reality from an evil falling moon? The inquiry, the adventure, the surprises around every corner, yes—not to mention the chance to turn into someone else entirely for a while. But there was also this: as an anxious person who experiences panic attacks, I often feel as though the sky is falling. Panic attacks can feel as if the world is actually ending. I can easily draw comparisons between that feeling of anxiety and the way the inevitable disaster Link is trying to stop in the game lurks above him everywhere he goes. In some ways, the game wasn’t just an adventure or a chance to wage battle: it was a way to combat my own anxiety without real world stakes. If I lost, I could restart the game. All I stood to lose was my own data.

Writing—especially personal writing—certainly has higher stakes than this. But these higher stakes are what make all of the hard work worth it. If someone who feels alone in their experience can see themselves in my narrative, that is worth the vulnerability it takes to put the words down on the page. Writing nonfiction can save someone else who is waging their own personal battles.

What am I drawn to reading now? Personal essays that are story-driven and surprising and develop lines of inquiry about tensions that can’t be easily resolved. The ability to experience a life outside of my own in some way. The chance to sit with two truths that may appear to contradict each other. We can engage in escape while also engaging with reality, because one person’s reality can be an escape for someone else.

Readers may have different motivations for interacting with a work—different experiences and agendas. They might want a mystery, or they might want an adventure or, perhaps, a story of dismantling obstacles for good—but one way or another, they are going to have to perform an action. Something will be provoked. It’s up to them to decide what comes next. Writing nonfiction means giving someone else the opportunity to use your mask. Let them take a turn at defeating the moon.

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How to Conclude Your Nonfiction Chapter or Story

Top four nonfiction conclusion tips to leave the reader feeling satisfied, while still hungry for more.

Cassandra C. Stirling

The Writing Cooperative

I never knew how flexible I could be in a stressful moment until the day we walked sight unseen into the AirBnB we rented while work was being done on our new house. My idea of a kitchen and the owner’s idea of a kitchen significantly differed and his fell short of what we needed. How were we to survive in this space for two months?

If I were to write a story about my adventures during that time period, that’s how I’d start it. A little bit of intrigue to keep you guessing as to what that image signifies and a foreshadowing of the hardship to come. Once I completed the main meat of my tale, I would then need to end it in a way that encapsulates all that came before it. But how would I do that?

A good conclusion to any story or chapter does two things: reiterates your message and wraps the content up in as satisfactory a way as possible. Readers are selfish. They only read something if they think they’ll get something out of it, whether that is entertainment, education, tips, or something to chew on. They want you to answer the ‘so what’ question they’re all asking (for more on this point, see my article, So What? ): So what about climate change…

Written by Cassandra C. Stirling

Writer, editor, writing coach, and videogamer. I write about writing, books, and occasionally videogames.

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What is narrative non-fiction and how do you write a piece so powerful it is nominated for a Pulitzer? In this interview, Matt Hongoltz-Hetling talks about his process for finding stories worth writing about and how he turns them into award-winning articles.

In the intro, I talk about Spotify (possibly) getting into audiobooks and Amazon (possibly) getting into podcasts as reported on The Hotsheet , and the New Publishing Standard . David Gaughran's How to Sell Books in 2020 ; a college student who used GPT3 to reach the top of Hacker News with an AI-generated blog post [ The Verge ]; and ALLi on Is Copyright Broken? Artificial Intelligence and Author Copyright . Plus, synchronicity in book research, and my personal podcast episode on Druids, Freemasons, and Frankenstein: The Darker Side of Bath, England (where I live!)

Matt Hongoltz-Hetling is a Pulitzer finalist and award-winning investigative journalist. He's also the author of A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear .

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript below.

• From writing for pennies an article to writing a Pulitzer – nominated article
• What is narrative non-fiction?
• How does narrative non-fiction differ from fiction?
• Where ideas come from and how to begin forming a story idea
• The necessity of being respectful of the real lives being examined and written about
• Portraying interview subjects with shades of grey
• Turning hours of source material into something coherent
• Finding the balance between story structure and meaning
• Knowing when an idea is appropriate for a book

You can find Matt Hongoltz-Hetling at matt-hongoltzhetling.com and on Twitter @hh_matt

Transcript of Interview with Matt Hongoltz-Hetling

Joanna: Matt Hongoltz-Hetling is a Pulitzer finalist and award-winning investigative journalist. He's also the author of A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear . Welcome, Matt.

Matt: Hey, thanks for having me on, Joanna.

Joanna: It's great to have you on the show.

First up, tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing.

Matt: I got into writing when I was eight years old and I wrote this amazing book. I don't want to brag, but I wrote this book about an elf that was fighting in a dungeon, and this elf had some items of a magical persuasion and used them to defeat all sorts of monsters. So, that was pretty awesome. And I've been writing stuff ever since.

I grew up knowing that I wanted to write, loving to read, all that. And then my career path never really seemed to go that way. I actually started a student newspaper when I was in college in the hopes that that would be primarily a writing occupation, but I found very quickly that it was more small business skills that were needed.

I was selling advertisements much more so than writing to fill the newspaper sadly. And so, at some point I had just got the pile of rejection slips that I think we're all familiar with. I just didn't really know how to go about getting into the industry.

I was literally writing articles for, like, 25 cents an article, these, like, ‘How do you fix an engine?' or not even an engine, nothing that complicated, but, ‘How do you clean a window?'

Joanna: Content farms.

Matt: Yes, right. Content farms. Yes. Thank you. But I was writing.

My wife encouraged me to submit an article for my local weekly newspaper in a small town in the state of Maine. And that led to me being able to write more articles, still for very small amounts, 30 bucks an article. And that led to me getting a full-time job as a journalist at a weekly newspaper in rural Maine.

And even though that was fantastically exciting for me, I always knew that I wanted to do more. And so, I was always pushing, looking for that next level that would allow me to write more of the stuff that I wanted to write. And so, that led to larger newspapers, and then magazine opportunities, and then magazine opportunities led to a book opportunity. Now, I'm happy that I am just on the cusp of publishing my first book. I'm very excited about that.

Joanna: We're going to get into that in a second, but I just wonder because this is so fascinating.

How many years was it between writing for a content farm to being a Pulitzer finalist?

Matt: That was actually the shortest journey that you can imagine. Within, let's say, two years of my first newspaper article. I wrote the article that led to my highest-profile resume point which was that Pulitzer finalist status. And that article was about substandard housing conditions in the federal Section 8 program. It's federally subsidized housing and it's meant to be kept up to a certain standard, and the article which I wrote with a writing partner demonstrated that it was not and that there were a lot of people at fault.

What really elevated that article, it was a good article and all of that, but what really got it that level of recognition was that it also turned out to be an impactful article. It happened to come at a time when other people were looking at the housing authority for various reasons. It really struck a nerve and our Senator, Republican Susan Collins of Maine, she took a very avid interest in our reporting and was motivated to encourage reforms of the national Section 8 system.

She was in a political position to do that because she held the purse strings for the housing authorities. And so, it happened to have this very disproportionate impact and because it led to a positive change for the Section 8 housing program in the United States.

I think the people in the Pulitzer committee must've loved the idea that this tiny little rural weekly newspaper where we had three reporter desks, one of which was perennially vacant, had managed to write a story that was really relevant to the national scene.

Joanna: Absolutely fascinating. And I hope that encourages people listening who might feel that they're in a place in their writing career where they're not feeling very successful and yet you bootstrapped your way up there to something really impactful, as you say.

We're going to come back to the craft of writing, but let's just define ‘narrative nonfiction.' Your book, A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear , which is a great title.

What is narrative nonfiction and where's the line between that and fiction or straight nonfiction?

Matt: Narrative nonfiction, the way that I think of it is i t's basically just like any other fiction book, or novel, or piece that you might pick up except for the events described in it actually happened .

When I think of the difference, it just seems, to me, to be such a small, tiny little difference between fiction and nonfiction because when you write fiction, you're starting with an infinite number of possible events to write about. And when you're writing nonfiction, you're starting with a universe of events.

You're starting with everything that ever happened in the entire universe. That's the material that you can draw on. It is so close to infinite that really, it's just a method of curation. You're going to select some of these facts and arrange them in an order that will create the same exact experience as a powerful piece of fiction writing.

A narrative piece emphasizes the same things that a fiction story would in terms of there's character arcs, there are transformations, there's setting. We want a climax, we want everything that you would want when you're writing a fiction piece.

Joanna: Interesting. And you said at the beginning that it's a tiny difference between fiction and nonfiction. And I'm like, ‘No, surely, this is the biggest separation.' So, I feel like people would have quite a different view on that, but it's interesting because you said there, ‘a method of curation,' and you select the facts, whereas with fiction, obviously, you make it up.

How can you curate truth in a way that serves your story but doesn't distort what really happened?

Matt: That's an excellent question. And I think you do have to be careful to keep things in perspective.

So, I was thinking, ‘What if I was writing about someone in the aeronautics industry or who was an astronaut or maybe someone else within the industry who is motivated by this idea that people want to,' or yeah, ‘that he would like people to colonize the stars?' That's, I think, a very common sci-fi-type theme, and it's also very apparent in the people who go into those fields.

And so, you might take a set of facts. I would ask that person, ‘What are some of the seminal moments in your career? What were the turning points? What were the important things that shaped you as a person?' And this was just an idea that I had, I would look at the amount of cosmic matter in our atmosphere. So, every time a meteor hits the atmosphere, we know it burns up, dust rains down on the earth and that dust becomes part of us. We breathe it in.

Then I would try to draw a timeline between some natural spike in the amount of cosmic dust in the air that might've gone into our subject's body, and that person's decision to get into aeronautics. So, you maybe get to describe that this fantastic spectacular event of a comet the size of a blue whale entering the atmosphere, burning up, raining dust down on, let's say, North America.

And this aeronautics person is 12 years old at the time, he's thinking about baseball, but then he goes to a museum two weeks later and he's breathing in more cosmic dust on that day than he would on an average day, and then he decides to become an astronaut.

You can paint a very poetic scene with that, but it's also very important that you're not actually suggesting or theorizing that the cosmic dust had anything to do with that person's decision.

It's a way to wax poetically about this character and to maybe access a greater idea which is that we all want to go colonize the stars to some extent. That's a very human thing. It appears in our very earliest writings on both fictional and non-fictional.

And you can talk about this amazing spectacular event, you can talk about this person's decision, and if you do it right, the audience will understand that you've just used this as a jumping-off point to explore some of these bigger concepts and cool narrative opportunities without actually saying in a false way that cosmic dust is what makes us want to go out there. So, I'm just saying that you can arrange those events in a way that gives it life, and vibrancy, and maybe some creativity.

Joanna: I like that example. And you brought up so many things that I'm thinking about there.

First of all is using the individual to highlight the universal. If you wrote a piece about how big the universe is or whatever, that's not narrative nonfiction. That might be one of your how-to articles back in the day. So, you've used someone's experience to highlight something universal.

Where do you start? Because this is a question that fiction writers think about all the time. Do you start with the theme of, say, space? Do you start with a character, say you met someone and you want to interview them, or are you starting with, in your case, I guess, a commission or are you starting with just your own curiosity and following where it goes? So, I guess, as you said, that you could write about anything in the whole world.

How do you decide what to write?

Matt: I've spent a lot of my freelance writing career trying to craft pitches that will convince editors to give me a green light and offer me compensation in exchange for a piece of writing. And so, that undergirding structure allows for all those sorts of scenarios that you posit.

I'm always keeping my eye out for things when something interests me and lights me up, then I try to think about how I can make that subject or person who has just lit me up into a pitch that is marketable. I saw a freestyle street rapper a few weeks ago and I was really into what he was doing. I just thought he was amazing because his shtick was that he would incorporate things about the world around him into his rhymes really seamlessly.

I thought, ‘Oh, this guy has got this really amazing talent.' And so then you start thinking like, ‘Is this something that I would pitch to maybe a magazine about rhyme and rhyme structure or is this something that might be more like…is this a cognitive or a neurological skill that he's developed and how might that fit into maybe more of a neuroscience type magazine or is this just a guy who's got the great American story of, he developed a skill on the streets as it were, and then launched it into a career, in which case, we have maybe more of a universal story that could appear in any major market magazine?'

I suppose usually what sparks my interest is a person but it's not at all uncommon for my interest to also be sparked by just a topic. And then I'm searching for those characters who can exemplify that topic.

Joanna: Your writing does focus very much on people and all characters, as you say, but I'm wondering where do you take it from then? How do you tease out the story? Do you interview them?

And again, when you have this material about that person, how do you highlight your story, but also respect the person because you might say that, so, you've got the pitch with the neurological aspect. So, you think, ‘Okay. I want to write about how his brain works differently to someone else, how he can do that,' but then you find out some awful thing and you think that, ‘Okay. How do I respect this person, but how do I also deliver on my pitch?'

How do we ask the right questions to make our characters real, but also be respectful, because this is real life you're writing about?

Matt: My own inclination and approach is typically to just jump in and that's often great because it allows me to maintain forward momentum and use real wishful positive thinking to just hope that everything's going to pan out.

But sometimes its failing is that I will go very confidently striding down what turns out to be a dead end. And so, maybe I pitch this thing as a neurological sciencey story, and then a magazine editor says, ‘Yes, let's do this.' And so then I go back to the subject and I say, ‘I'd like to interview you,' and tell them what's going on.

And in the course of the interview, it turns out that they are not at all representative of the category of box that I want to put them into. And then I've suddenly got this big, awkward problem where I am looking for a different subject to satisfy the magazine editor and trying to get value out of my initial subject and my interview with him by placing him into something that is more appropriate for him. But when I get to that interview phase, I typically like to already have a commission in place before I do that because it's quite a time investment.

When I do interview someone, I like to make them very lengthy, in-depth interviews. Rarely do I talk to someone for less than two or three hours. And in the course of that two or three hours, my interview style is to not necessarily focus too much on asking the right questions so much as just unlocking how they see themselves and what is important to them, and get them talking about what lights them up.

And by not having a very firm idea of where I want to lead a subject, and being flexible in what they can say, what I find is that I often wind up with a really interesting story that maybe doesn't quite fit the mold precisely for where I thought it would go, but it's close enough that I can bridge that gap and the narrative is so compelling and good that nobody cares if there's maybe a slight sidetrack, a slight departure.

And as far as what if you find out something bad about someone while you're in the course of that interview? You're interviewing a person and they suddenly put the interview on pause and speak very sharply or meanly to their spouse or child and suddenly you get the feeling like, ‘You know what, this isn't really actually a very good person.' So, what do you do there?

I think it is very important to acknowledge the bad in people. And it's almost a necessary component. If I am not writing something both bad and good about a person that I'm writing about, then I know I'm not really doing a very good job because I don't know any people who are 100% good and I don't know any people who are 100% bad.

Oftentimes, if I'm talking to someone who we might think of as the hero of a narrative, they're doing good work, we're spotlighting them because of some amazing accomplishment they've done, I think it's really important to throw in a couple of negative character traits or details that will add a note of reality to your writing.

And conversely, if I'm interviewing someone who has committed murder or if I'm interviewing them because they're a bad person, then I'm always really looking for that redeeming quality because some murderers have just had a very bad day or gone through a very bad period in their life and maybe had some disadvantages in the first place.

Even though they've done this terrible, awful thing, there's still some context that you can provide that humanizes them. I think that most of my subjects, I think, appreciate that. Certainly, I've written about some people who've been very unhappy with how they've been portrayed. But I think most people appreciate it when you portray enough facets of their character that their true personality comes through.

Joanna: I've not done this kind of writing. So, I find it fascinating. I've been doing this podcast for 12 years and I have many, many, many hours and a lot of transcripts of material and I've thought many times, ‘It'd be great if I could go through and find all these snippets and turn this into something.' Working with transcripts is really hard. You just mentioned, you have a three-hour interview. So, presumably, you're recording this and you're taking notes as well.

How do you turn all this source material into an article? What's your curation and what's that process?

Matt: I am the kind of person who hates to throw things out. My wife will tell you that that can drive her nuts. And the same is true of my writing. I like to start with everything that has been said, even in a three-hour interview, and then just slowly apply criteria that squeezed some things out.

I always wind up with more material than will fit in the space that I have allotted. And then that encourages me to try to cram more words and more facts into smaller spaces and that results in this real efficient distillation. I think that's another good thing maybe about not being too goal-oriented when you write.

What I typically do is I'll interview someone, we'll have the three-hour interview. I've got copious notes, I got an audio transcript. If I am feeling up to it, I will transcribe every word of that audio interview which is grueling. Sometimes I will use one of those online programs that will convert it and spit out a transcript for you. And that transcript is never perfect, but you can make it perfect by listening and going through. And then I just slowly go through and clean it up.

Often, it's not like writing at all. It's like just fixing things. I might go through it and just correct all the typos in my transcription. And then I might go through and remove all the garble and then I might go through and anything that seems like a cohesive thought, I might put quotation marks around and put on the, ‘he said,' or the, ‘she said.'

Then I will maybe strip out, I'll say, ‘Oh, here, this person talked for 10 minutes about their mother and they were actually quite redundant, but here, this one time they said it, it was the most striking of the eight times they said the same thing.' And so, I will move those other seven iterations down to a notes section at the bottom.

And in this way, I am slowly shrinking and squeezing the text that is there. And if there are things that they've said, points they've made that are important, but that they didn't say it particularly well, then I might write a paraphrase and put the originals down in my notes section.

And then at some point, I will create a series of categories that represent different areas of the story, and then I will sort all of their quotes into those different categories. And all of this stuff that I've just talked about is very mechanical. So, even if you're not feeling particularly inspired, you can go through this rote, brute-force process and nibble away, and nibble away, and nibble away.

What you find at the end is that you actually have the bones of a story.

Often, the story will also involve going through the same process with multiple people and other sources of information, but once you've arranged all that stuff under the subheadings, and then you start to rearrange things within those sections, you find that you are suddenly, magically two-thirds of the way there.

Joanna: That's fascinating. I want to ask about this Pulitzer thing because I know everyone's so interested. And really, this is one of those prizes that is, for many people, a life goal, and you've actually won other awards. You're a multi-award-winning writer.

What's interesting to me is you talked about a story that made an impact. Substandard housing conditions is not the most inspirational thing for most people, but it's interesting. Presumably, you're not winning these prizes for your beautiful sentence structure.

For those authors who obsess with grammar and exact sentences, where's the line between that and story and meaning?

Matt: I think it is all-important including the sentence structure. I always take the position that grammar, and grammar is not really all that important other than in the service of making points very clearly. I really tend to take these very esoteric grammar points and just chuck them out the window because I want somebody to be able to understand what I'm saying.

Oftentimes, adhering very strictly to the rules of grammar impedes the knowledge of the layperson who I want to be able to read, and digest, and appreciate my article . I don't want to poo-poo sentence structure too much. I think there are so many articles written that you're trying to break through the noise of, and stand out in some way. I think the stories that I've been awarded from various organizations and for various things, they've all gone through the same basic process as many of my stories that have not been so recognized and have not turned out necessarily all that good.

But for whatever reason, there was a perfect alignment where the person that I happened to be talking to happened to exemplify that issue just right and the setting happened to work out and the climax of their personal story… there's a lot of just happenstance, I suppose, in that once you've been commissioned to write a story, you're writing that story.

And sometimes the material will support a real cracker-jack breakout story. What's more often is that as you go through the process, you hit an obstacle that you have to smooth over in some way and you turn in a very serviceable, perfectly good story.

But the things that I think really allow it to break through and get head and shoulders above tend to be things that are out of your control. You're going to do your very best job of research, you're going to do your very best job of writing, you're going to use all the good phrases, you're going to exert full control of your mastery of time and space, you're going to jump around in the narrative if that's in the timeline rather, if that's what the narrative calls for.

If you want to focus on the beating of a fly's wings, for some reason, you will do that. If you want to jump back into prehistory, you'll do that. And after you've employed all of those tricks and techniques to craft the very best story that you possibly can from the material, sometimes the material itself will just harmonize perfectly and get you to that place to achieve that potential that you hoped that you could. It's a little bit of luck and magic, I suppose. We can't always summon it or bottle it.

Joanna: Coming to the book, A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear , which, again, I love the title. It's great. What was it about this idea that made you decide to turn this story into a book-length project rather than a long-form article?

How did you know, ‘Right, I'm going to write a book about this?'

Matt: I was first commissioned for an article on the same topic. The story for those who don't know, it's about a group of libertarians which is a fringe political movement within the United States and their emphasis is on personal freedoms and personal rights.

This national group of libertarians decided to come to one small town, and just take over the town, and turn it into their utopia. Soon after they tried to enact this kind of crazy heist of the town, the town started experiencing bear problems. And so, the book is about how those things are connected.

I was initially commissioned to write an article based on the unusual bear activity that was seen in that town. I was interviewing a woman for my local newspaper about her difficulties in accessing VA benefits. And she was what we stereotype as a crazy cat lady. She was a little bit of a shut-in, she had a bunch of cats milling around, and I asked her about her cats because it's a good icebreaker, and I like cats.

She said, ‘I used to let them outside, but that was before the bears came.' I was like, ‘Oh, well, that sounds really interesting. Forget about the VA. Tell me about bears.' She just started talking about how a bear had eaten two of her cats and how the bears had become very bold and aggressive and were doing weird things.

I started asking around town, asking other people if they had also had bear experiences that seemed unusual. And when I had a feeling for what was going on in that town, I pitched the magazine article and I was really excited to get this magazine article. I really wanted to do a great job on it because ‘The Atavist Magazine' is a good platform and I knew that it would help me to make the case to other magazines that I could write really good narrative stuff.

I went back to town and went through all the interview process and all of that. And when I wrote my first draft for that magazine article, it was 32,000 words. And they would have accepted 4,000 words. So, the article, which I was very happy with, was still very much of a compromise of what I wanted to say about this bizarre situation involving libertarians and bears in this town.

I got in a couple of the best anecdotes including a situation where a bear fights a llama, but there was so much left unsaid, so many colorful things. In that case, I just had this massive trove of colorful materials sitting in my pocket. I knew that there was a very large narrative there because I had already written probably half of the book-length on it. So, it just seemed very natural to write a book about it.

Joanna: Is it a comedy?

Matt: I would call it a dark comedy. There is a lot of very funny stuff, I think, and I do stray into the comedic quite a bit. But there are also some very, kind of, weighty issues. A woman gets attacked by a bear. That's not funny, but there's also just all sorts of goofy stuff.

The llama thing is great. There's one situation where there are two old women who live next door to each other on a hill, and one of them is absolutely terrified of bears. Every time she cooks steak inside, she won't go outside for a day because she's afraid that the bears will smell the steak on her. And meanwhile, her neighbor has been feeding the bears doughnuts for 20 years and has a crowd of bears sitting outside her home waiting for her to come out with doughnuts and buckets of grain twice a day.

There's just a lot of really absurd situations that I was privy to. And I milk them for all I've got.

Joanna: That's so funny. It's so funny there because, of course, the truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction. And I guess that's what you're doing with narrative nonfiction is you are finding these stories.

We're almost out of time, but I do want to ask you because in your original email to me, you said, ‘I think a lot of writers start off like I started out, isolated and bereft of helpful connections and not the person who is going to schmooze at an event or something.'

How you have managed to do these things and even interview these people and get over those initial issues?

Matt: I think for most of my life, even while being very passionate about writing, I never felt like I was plugged into the writing community. I feel like everyone who went to get an advanced degree in writing, their professor could hook them up and their former colleagues would go out and join the industry and in places that would be helpful to them.

I just felt, like, really locked out of all of that. And schmoozing is definitely helpful, but, Joanna, I know that there's a certain component of your audience that is never going to schmooze because it's not their thing, and if they try really hard to force themselves to schmooze, they will sound like they're someone who's trying really hard to schmooze, right? It's just not going to be in everyone's nature and it wasn't in my nature.

I think even though the non-schmoozers have a disadvantage relative to the schmoozers, the non-schmoozers can get by on the basis of purely professional relationships which is what I did. As a journalist, I did develop a certain skill set in talking to people, but I've never been the guy at the cocktail party of other writers and editors who is like, ‘Hey, hire me for your next opportunity.'

I think for me, the key was to always I started small, I started writing for newspapers. I sent endless pitches and queries with different ideas and I slowly got better at sending those pitches . And every time a story of mine turned out that was something that I was proud of, that turned out pretty good, I added that to my portfolio.

And when one editor gives you a chance, lends you that sympathetic ear and gives you a chance to write for the next tier of publication that you're interested in, if you satisfy that editor, you may not have schmoozed them, but you have a working relationship with them. If they're happy with your work, that's all you need.

If you don't have the ability to schmooze your way into that, you still have an editor that you're working with. And perhaps you can ask that editor if they have other people in the industry who might also be willing to look favorably upon a submission from you where you're not just in the slush pile.

And you go through that process 100 or 1,000 times, and if you pay attention while you do it, you walk out of it with a group of a dozen editors that you can send a pitch to who have some idea of who you are and whether or not they like your work and your writing. And you're just always working to increase that circle of editors who look on you favorably.

Over the years, what I found and was very happy about was that those editors also bounce around from one position to another. Every time someone you know moves from one publication to the other, you want to try to maintain some contact with their initial publication and approach them in their new position and see if that might allow you to expand your horizons a little bit.

It's an iterative, slow process. It's not as easy as going to a cocktail party or a bar and palling around with the people who hold the reins to these publications, but it does get you there.

Joanna: That's great advice because I know I'm an introvert, many people listening are introverts, and knowing that the long-term professional approach is great. I think that's true if it's people submitting to short stories or if people want to get into traditional publishing, then all of that's quite true.

Where can people find you and your work and everything you do online?

Matt: Oh, thank you so much for asking. You can find me on Twitter @hh_matt . If you Google my name, you'll get to my website at matt-hongoltzhetling.com , and you can find my book, A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear , on Amazon, any major online retailer, and through the publisher which is PublicAffairs, a subsidiary of Hachette.

Joanna: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Matt. That was great.

Matt: Joanna, thank you so much. This has been fantastic.

Reader Interactions

August 24, 2020 at 4:19 am

You always ask great questions Joanna but you outdid yourself this time on a topic I knew nothing about. That bear book sounds fascinating!

August 24, 2020 at 8:47 am

Thanks, Julie! Glad you found it interesting 🙂

August 9, 2024 at 8:26 am

Very interesting and insightful. Makes me want to go around, look for stories, inteview people and start writing an article or a book.

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How to Write a Conclusion for a Narrative Essay: An Ideal Conclusion

Published : January 13, 2024

By | MyPremiumEssay 12 mins read

In narrative essays, the conclusion serves as the final brushstroke on the canvas of your essay. It's the moment when you leave a lasting impression, prompting reflection and emotion in your readers. So, how do you write a conclusion that resonates, leaving your audience with a sense of fulfillment? Let's explore the steps and guidelines for concluding a narrative essay and remember, you can always explore options to buy narrative essays online for added inspiration and guidance.

Concluding the Narrative Essay: The Perfect Ending

Examples of effective narrative essay conclusion, tips on writing the conclusion of your narrative essay.

In the pursuit of a flawless conclusion for your narrative essay, the paramount steps are:

Revisit the Essence

Wrap up your narrative essay by echoing its central theme. Take your readers back through the emotional arc of your story. Whether it’s about overcoming, loss, or finding oneself, highlight the core message again.

For example: In my journey's dimly lit moments, I uncovered not just the power to face challenges but also the enduring spirit in us all.

Echo Emotions

Stir emotions by revisiting your story's emotional peaks and valleys. Show, don't just tell. Paint your narrative’s emotional scenes with vivid words and imagery.

For example: The sting of defeat still clung to me, yet in the quiet ruins of lost dreams, a spark of hope kindled, rising anew like a phoenix from ashes.

Leave Room for Contemplation

Prompt your readers to ponder the wider meaning of your story. What insights emerge? How does it resonate with universal human experiences? Guide them to see your personal tale as a mirror to broader truths.

Take this example: In the wake of my trials, I understood that resilience is more than personal; it's a shared thread of our collective spirit, ever-present in adversity.

End with a Memorable Quote or Thought

End your narrative essay with a striking quote or deep statement. This leaves your readers with a powerful, lasting idea that sums up your story's core.

For instance: In life's rich tapestry, our scars are not imperfections but threads that stitch together our unique life stories.

Circle Back to the Beginning

Circle back to your narrative's start for a cohesive finish. By returning to the starting point, you create a sense of closure and unity within your essay. This circular structure reinforces the completeness of your storytelling.

Consider this: Standing once at uncertainty's crossroads, I never imagined how the path ahead would shape me into my true self.

Invoke the Senses

Draw your readers in with sensory details in your conclusion. Paint a vivid scene using sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell to immerse them in your story’s essence.

For Example: As I embarked on a new chapter, the autumn breeze whispered of fresh starts, its crispness laden with the scent of new possibilities.

Craft a Powerful Final Sentence

Finish your conclusion with a sentence that leaves a lasting impact. Aim for something memorable, stirring, or deeply meaningful. This final thought should echo in your readers' minds well after they've read your essay.

Here's an example: As my journey quieted down, I discovered that life's most remarkable tales are often scripted in the simplicity of everyday moments.

Also Read: How To Write A Narrative Essay?

Here are some examples of effective narrative essay conclusions:

1 Conclusion that summarizes the main points and reflects on the significance of the experience: Eventually, my journey of teaching abroad was a profound learning experience. It revealed my own untapped potential and resilience. I gained insights into compassion, understanding, and the value of cultural sensitivity. This adventure, rich in lessons, will forever be a cherished part of my life.

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2 Conclusion that ends with a question to make the reader think: As I look back on this experience, I often think about what if I hadn't dared to venture out. Such a choice would have kept me from discovering my own strengths and the vastness of the world. I'm thankful for this enlightening journey and urge everyone to embrace new experiences, stepping beyond their usual boundaries.

3 Conclusion that uses strong language and imagery to leave a lasting impression on the reader: The lasting memory of my students' joyous faces will always be with me. They showed me the true value of happiness, resilience, and hope. I'm thankful for the chance to have impacted their lives and am confident they will achieve remarkable things.

Remember, a strong conclusion ties back to your essay's theme and leaves a lasting thought for your readers.

Read More: How to Write a Narrative Essay Outline?

When writing the conclusion of your narrative essay, keep in mind the following tips:

In wrapping up your essay, avoid just repeating the tale. The reader knows the story; focus instead on its deeper message.

Keep new info out of the conclusion to avoid confusion.

Use vivid language and imagery to leave a strong, lasting impression.

Your ending should tie back to the essay and provoke thought.

Lastly, polish your conclusion to perfection, ensuring it's error-free. Keep it brief, engaging, and thought-provoking.

Use these steps and tips from our blog to craft conclusions that resonate and make your readers think about something. Let MyPremiumEssay be your secret tool to add sparkle to your words. Here's to writing standout stories and essays. Happy writing adventures!

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How to Write a Narrative Essay | Example & Tips

Published on July 24, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

A narrative essay tells a story. In most cases, this is a story about a personal experience you had. This type of essay , along with the descriptive essay , allows you to get personal and creative, unlike most academic writing .

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Table of contents

What is a narrative essay for, choosing a topic, interactive example of a narrative essay, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about narrative essays.

When assigned a narrative essay, you might find yourself wondering: Why does my teacher want to hear this story? Topics for narrative essays can range from the important to the trivial. Usually the point is not so much the story itself, but the way you tell it.

A narrative essay is a way of testing your ability to tell a story in a clear and interesting way. You’re expected to think about where your story begins and ends, and how to convey it with eye-catching language and a satisfying pace.

These skills are quite different from those needed for formal academic writing. For instance, in a narrative essay the use of the first person (“I”) is encouraged, as is the use of figurative language, dialogue, and suspense.

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Narrative essay assignments vary widely in the amount of direction you’re given about your topic. You may be assigned quite a specific topic or choice of topics to work with.

• Write a story about your first day of school.
• Write a story about your favorite holiday destination.

You may also be given prompts that leave you a much wider choice of topic.

• Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself.
• Write about an achievement you are proud of. What did you accomplish, and how?

In these cases, you might have to think harder to decide what story you want to tell. The best kind of story for a narrative essay is one you can use to talk about a particular theme or lesson, or that takes a surprising turn somewhere along the way.

For example, a trip where everything went according to plan makes for a less interesting story than one where something unexpected happened that you then had to respond to. Choose an experience that might surprise the reader or teach them something.

Narrative essays in college applications

When applying for college , you might be asked to write a narrative essay that expresses something about your personal qualities.

For example, this application prompt from Common App requires you to respond with a narrative essay.

In this context, choose a story that is not only interesting but also expresses the qualities the prompt is looking for—here, resilience and the ability to learn from failure—and frame the story in a way that emphasizes these qualities.

An example of a short narrative essay, responding to the prompt “Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself,” is shown below.

Hover over different parts of the text to see how the structure works.

Since elementary school, I have always favored subjects like science and math over the humanities. My instinct was always to think of these subjects as more solid and serious than classes like English. If there was no right answer, I thought, why bother? But recently I had an experience that taught me my academic interests are more flexible than I had thought: I took my first philosophy class.

Before I entered the classroom, I was skeptical. I waited outside with the other students and wondered what exactly philosophy would involve—I really had no idea. I imagined something pretty abstract: long, stilted conversations pondering the meaning of life. But what I got was something quite different.

A young man in jeans, Mr. Jones—“but you can call me Rob”—was far from the white-haired, buttoned-up old man I had half-expected. And rather than pulling us into pedantic arguments about obscure philosophical points, Rob engaged us on our level. To talk free will, we looked at our own choices. To talk ethics, we looked at dilemmas we had faced ourselves. By the end of class, I’d discovered that questions with no right answer can turn out to be the most interesting ones.

The experience has taught me to look at things a little more “philosophically”—and not just because it was a philosophy class! I learned that if I let go of my preconceptions, I can actually get a lot out of subjects I was previously dismissive of. The class taught me—in more ways than one—to look at things with an open mind.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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If you’re not given much guidance on what your narrative essay should be about, consider the context and scope of the assignment. What kind of story is relevant, interesting, and possible to tell within the word count?

The best kind of story for a narrative essay is one you can use to reflect on a particular theme or lesson, or that takes a surprising turn somewhere along the way.

Don’t worry too much if your topic seems unoriginal. The point of a narrative essay is how you tell the story and the point you make with it, not the subject of the story itself.

Narrative essays are usually assigned as writing exercises at high school or in university composition classes. They may also form part of a university application.

When you are prompted to tell a story about your own life or experiences, a narrative essay is usually the right response.

The key difference is that a narrative essay is designed to tell a complete story, while a descriptive essay is meant to convey an intense description of a particular place, object, or concept.

Narrative and descriptive essays both allow you to write more personally and creatively than other kinds of essays , and similar writing skills can apply to both.

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How to Create A Narrative Plot Structure for Nonfiction

By   Boni Wagner-Stafford

July 17, 2018

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As a non-fiction author, you may not know that consciously creating a narrative nonfiction plot structure is key to delivering a good read. You will bore your readers to death if you repeat fact after fact. You want to organize all your research and information into a coherent and compelling whole. Basically, you need to tell a story.

How do you create a narrative plot for nonfiction?

What nonfiction plot structure do you follow? Depending on where you look or who you talk to, you may hear about three-act, four-act, and five-act structures. You might find debates about how many plot points must weave through your manuscript. For our purposes, we’ll keep it simple and talk about the classic or three-act narrative plot structure.

Three act narrative plot structure

Whether you’re writing in the nonfiction sub-genres of memoir , journalistic, business or self-help, you will still want to create a narrative plot. Every story, including a true story, has a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is the basic tenet of the three-act narrative plot structure. We know these three acts as the set-up, the confrontation, and the resolution.

During the setup, you’re setting the scene.

• You introduce the protagonist who is the main character or champion of your main idea. In business nonfiction, for example, you are likely to be your own protagonist.
• You’ll introduce the protagonist’s world and what makes them tick.
• Then you’ll describe the event that sets everything else in motion.
• Next, describe the protagonist’s decision to react to that event, which is essentially the decision to embark on their journey. This is usually the first plot point.

The Confrontation

The confrontation part of the story is normally the longest part, comprising fully half of the manuscript. This is where the protagonist sets out on their journey and encounters obstacles along the way.

• You introduce other main characters, including the main antagonist who isn’t always a person. (Your antagonist could be, for example, societal beliefs, outdated technology, even a broken justice system.)
• You may describe the problem you’ve encountered and that you are about to solve, or explain how to address challenging customer demands.
• There will be some kind of major conflict about midway through: a big obstacle or setback that the protagonist experiences. You draw battle lines and the action, or intensity, increases. The protagonist’s decision to deal with this conflict is the second major plot point.

The Resolution

The final act – that of resolution – takes up the last quarter or so of the story.

• Here’s the climax, where the protagonist and antagonist face off.
• After things have calmed down, you tie up the loose ends and release the tension.
• You also emphasize the theme of the story and the lesson learned.

In nonfiction, you’re writing about events and circumstances in real life. They don’t always happen in such a clean, formulaic way. It’s perfectly fine to use the above formula as a guide and make it work for the story you’re telling. There are, of course, other ways to approach your narrative plot structure.

Other Ways to Think About Beginning, Middle, End

It’s common to think telling a story through the beginning, middle, and end approach means following a chronology of sorts, which doesn’t always work. In fact, sometimes moving things around a bit makes for a more engaging narrative. The beginning is not always the beginning of time, rather the beginning of your story. Here’s where you can get creative.

Manipulate Time

Say, for instance, that you want to tell the story of someone accused of a crime they didn’t commit fighting for justice. Following the chronological three-act narrative plot, the crime itself will come somewhere in the middle of the book. However, your readers may have lost interest by then, wading through the person’s childhood and events that may seem irrelevant.

You want to draw your readers in as soon as you can, so start the book with the person’s wrongful arrest. There will have been events that have led up to this moment and the reason authorities accused this person of the crime, though. The solution is to manipulate time. You can use flashbacks, for instance, to describe the crime itself, the reason your protagonist was in the wrong place at the wrong time, the police investigation, and so on. Your story will still have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but not in a chronological order.

Circular Structure

Another option is to use a circular structure. Here you start with the climatic event that concludes the story. In our example, you may start your book with the day that the person is finally exonerated of the crime. It’s similar to the inverted pyramid structure of a newspaper article, where you start with the most important pieces.

However, unlike a newspaper article, you don’t give all the information right away. You want the reader to keep on reading to find out how things have led to this point and what the lesson is. So, you hold back. You start with the climactic event but you don’t elaborate too much. Then you use flashbacks to go back to the beginning. You always move the story forward, through the middle and on to the climax. After the climax, you tie up the loose ends.

Multiple Narratives

Often there are two or more narratives in non-fiction that are equally important. For example, let’s say you are writing about an issue like immigration. You want to reveal how different events in different countries have led to people’s need to leave their homes. Each country or each cause of immigration will have a different narrative plot.

So what do you do in such a case? Think about the movies of Robert Altman: he tells several parallel stories that may intertwine. Every parallel story has a beginning and a middle. At the end, they all flow together.

You can use a similar technique in your book: telling each separate story, maybe interweaving them and moving them towards the climax: immigration today. Then you picture the way forward to bring the story to a conclusion.

Why, What, How

Here’s another way to think about beginning, middle, and end in a nonfiction book. It’s one of my favourites. And that’s the “why, what, and how” narrative plot.

Let’s use a business book for this example.

• Your beginning may be the ‘why’: why there is a problem, why they should care about the solution you’re about to present.
• Your middle would be the ‘what’: lay out what your solution is.
• And the end could be your ‘how’: all your instructions to the reader regarding how they can implement your solution to experience nirvana for themselves.

Plot Your Narrative Plot Structure

To help you structure your book, it’s always useful to draw a diagram or write a summary in point form. Identify the main events or points from your research and see how they’re related. Is there one overarching story? Or are there different ones that you’ll need to interweave? Does it make more sense to tell the story in chronological order? Or would the story be more compelling if you started at the middle, or the end, of the timeline? The choice is yours. Just remember that whatever narrative plot structure you choose, you’ll want a logical order so your readers can follow and enjoy.

What’s your approach to creating your nonfiction narrative plot structure? We’d love to hear it!

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Last updated on Apr 23, 2021

How to Write a Nonfiction Book in 6 Steps

About the author.

Reedsy's editorial team is a diverse group of industry experts devoted to helping authors write and publish beautiful books.

About Savannah Cordova

Savannah is a senior editor with Reedsy and a published writer whose work has appeared on Slate, Kirkus, and BookTrib. Her short fiction has appeared in the Owl Canyon Press anthology, "No Bars and a Dead Battery". 

About Rebecca van Laer

Rebecca van Laer is a writer, editor, and the author of two books, including the novella How to Adjust to the Dark. Her work has been featured in literary magazines such as AGNI, Breadcrumbs, and TriQuarterly.

Writing a nonfiction book is a good way to share your story, impart your wisdom, or even build your business. And while you may not have thought about becoming an author before, it’s not as far-fetched a goal as you might think. In this post, we'll show you a simple process for becoming a nonfiction author. Hold onto that book idea of yours, and let’s see how we can turn it into something that readers will love.

How to write a nonfiction book:

1. Determine what problem your book will solve

2. outline your book with a logical structure, 3. choose a style guide to remain consistent, 4. blast through your messy first draft, 5. revise your manuscript and check your facts, 6. choose to publish traditionally or independently.

When you start out, your idea is likely to be nebulous or vague, e.g. “It’s a self-help book for new parents.” Before you put pen to paper, you need to crystallize and tighten your original idea, as well as think about your target audience and  how to reach readers . Using that information and the tips below, you can validate your book idea, find a sense of direction in your writing, and prepare for when you  try to get a book deal , if you want to traditionally publish. 

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Nail down your book idea

A key part of figuring out how to write a nonfiction book is being able to answer the three important "W" questions:

• What is it about?
• Why does it matter, and why should you write it?
• Who will want to read it — or rather, who are your ideal readers ?

Once you can answer these questions, you can fill in the blanks below:

[The who] will read my book about [the what] because [the why].

For example: "CEOs will read my book about workplace culture because it offers insights into the practices of the top ten companies voted 'best places' to work in the USA."

Being able to distill your book down in this way is a good sign you have a solid concept, and that your book will ultimately be marketable. If you can’t answer one of those questions, it may be time to return to the drawing board and tighten up your book’s main idea.

Research your topic

Once you’ve pinned down your idea, you’ll want to dig a bit into the topic or the nonfiction genre of your book to find the leads to develop this idea. Research is very important, and it can come in many shapes and sizes depending on the project. Here are a few of the different types of research that are suitable for certain genres.

💭 If you’re writing a memoir

We’ve got a whole guide on writing memoirs  with more research tips, but if there’s one thing we recommend you do, it’s to interview yourself. Ask yourself questions that strangers might ask you. A simple interview like this can help you reassess your memories and pull out the important bits of your story. (And of course, you can always have someone else interview you too!) 

🔧 If you’re writing a how-to 

Your research may involve collecting all sorts of existing material on the subject — such as blog posts and previously published essays. You might want to test some of the methods out in order to home in on the most effective instructions. 

☯ If you’re writing self-help

When writing a book about helping yourself , you might want to reach out to experts, such as psychologists and inspirational speakers, who can provide more evidence and insight to what you already know. If you're an expert yourself, you can interview yourself as you would for a memoir. It also doesn’t hurt to check out some of the best self-help books for inspiration!

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⏳ If you’re writing a history or biography

You’ll be gathering resources in libraries and archives, looking at primary and secondary sources on the matter. And if you’re writing about someone who’s still alive, you’ll probably need access to said person, or at least have their consent before forging on with the research. 

💼 If you’re writing a business book 

This requires a lot of understanding of the market that you’re writing about, be it the one concerning stocks or houseplants (see more of what we mean in our guide on how to write an ebook). You have to find out who might be interested in the products you're talking about, what their habits are like, where they usually go to for advice on matters related to the product — the list goes on. If you really want to dive into this route, perhaps this free course of ours can be of some help… 

Free course: How to write a business book

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Like fiction, where story structure can make or break a narrative , nonfiction relies on the reader being able to follow the writer’s leaps of logic. Since nonfiction is all about utility, structure is of the utmost importance in guiding the reader toward the information they need. You want your structure to be coherent but also gripping, so that readers want to read on and remember what they’ve read.  

Typically, if your book is about a process, or is a how-to, a linear structure makes sense. To make things more exciting for readers, you can also choose to disrupt the linear flow and follow a list or essay structure. Not sure what these structures are? Head on to our guide on how to outline a nonfiction book to find the answers (and more planning tips). 

Before you start writing, pick a style guide to follow throughout your book. What’s a style guide, you ask? It’s a set of guidelines to help keep your writing consistent. If you’ve worked with both US English and UK English, you might notice that certain things get spelled differently, i.e. ‘color’ versus ‘colour’. You should choose the variation that best suits your target audience, depending on where they’re based. A manual of style would help ensure you keep to one of those versions, along with some other details like whether you use the Oxford or serial comma, single or double quotation marks, or how to list your references. A popular guide that you might find useful is the Chicago Manual of Style . 

Why do things like this matter? Firstly, a proper guide matters to a nonfiction book because this book is supposed to be factual and accurate. Whether you’re writing popular self-help or more academic pieces, referencing will be a crucial part of your credibility, so you’ll want to nail it from the moment you start. Secondly, being consistent as you write will only help you in the editing process, preventing you from having to correct the same mistakes over and over again. 

Now the planning’s out of the way, there’s nowhere left to run: it’s time to actually sit down and write your first draft. Luckily, we've got plenty of tips for writing to help you out!

Use storytelling techniques 

Almost anything is more comprehensible and memorable when told as a story. Stories are easier to follow along, they get readers invested in the topic and curious about what happens next, and they tend to be more memorable than just hard facts. Which is why you should think about the stories that you can tell through your nonfiction book, and how to get the most out of them. 

So when you use anecdotal evidence, think about the person (a.k.a. character) involved, what their motivations and feelings are. How can those motives and sensations be linked to your main point? If you can, the fact that you’re sharing will be that much more meaningful to the reader because they've associated it with a story. Of course, you shouldn’t embellish facts and end up in the realm of fiction, but an eye for narrative detail is a big asset for a nonfiction author.

Hear it from another author: Harry Freedman shared his process with us in this Reedsy Live! 

Include dialogue 

Continuing on from the previous point, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use dialogue in your nonfiction writing. It’s a given that you’d use it in creative nonfiction, but it’s also a great way to break up dense texts and add a human voice to your book. If you have a transcript or a record of a direct quote, you can write it as dialogue . If not, feel free to refer to what was being said as something you’ve been told, rather than something someone said. The difference is subtle (as you can see in the example below), but either way, including conversations make the writing more accessible and interesting to read. 

“I bought a lot of ice cream that week where there was a heatwave,” Joe said.  Hot weather makes people crave ice cream — I remember my neighbor, Joe, stocking up in preparation for a heatwave. 

Of course, it goes without saying that in academic writing this might not be the most conventional or professional option. But if you have a clear recording of the conversation, and you see the value of including it in your book, then you can do it. Note, however, that the formatting for dialogues in academic writing especially may be different from the ones you see in fiction writing (this is why we cannot emphasize enough the need to find an appropriate editor). 

Avoid jargon 

This just might be the most important piece of advice we can give you: keep your use of jargon and complicated language to a minimum. This does not mean that you have to cut away every expert term you have in your vocabulary, it just means you should use them mindfully. Remember that you may be writing for a quite a big audience, many of whom might not know what you’re talking about. Not only will they need you to explain the term when you first introduce it, they’ll also be less likely to remember these terms if they’ve only just met them. 

As such, you want to minimize the use of jargon in your writing. If there’s a simpler way to express something, use it. It might feel like you’re killing story elements you love , but it will most likely be appreciated by your readers.If you must use specialist vocab, be sure to define it and add refreshers where necessary.

Have a writing schedule 

Our final tip is one for your process: create a writing schedule for yourself, whichever fits your own timetable and writing habits the most. Perhaps you have a day job and work best when you have a specific time to write at the end of the day. Or maybe you work better with a monthly goal of finishing certain sections and chapters in mind. Either way, setting out time to write regularly will help you progress and keep you from losing motivation.  

If you think learning how to write a nonfiction book is all about the actual writing, you’re forgetting another crucial dimension of the book business: editing. Most manuscripts go through several rounds of revisions before they reach their final form, and the first round should always be a self-edit. So don’t hold back: it’s time for you to ruthlessly edit your book . Here are some of our best tips for you. 

Double-check your facts 

It should go without saying, but this is probably the most important part of editing your nonfiction book. Whenever you refer to a fact, a historical event, or an argument that another academic has previously made, you have to make sure that it’s accurate. On top of that, you’ll have to add a footnote and reference at the end, listing your sources. You don’t want to be sharing false facts or accused of paraphrasing other’s works! 

As such, combing through and checking your facts is essential. It can be quite a tedious task, and you can never be too careful, so having a second pair of eyes on your manuscript is always a good idea.

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Learn how Reedsy can help you craft a beautiful book.

Cut down on excessive information 

While we’re on the topic of facts, let’s talk about being overly informative. Can a book that’s supposed to educate ever be provide too much information? Turns out too much of anything can be bad. 

Everything in your book should link back to the main problem that you’re addressing. Sometimes it’s tempting to drop in a fun fact or anecdote that you think readers might find entertaining, but it’s important to balance that with the coherence of your book. So as you reread your first draft, think about the purpose behind the pieces of information you lay out, and remove those that don’t aid in answering the main question of your book. 

Shorten your sentences

The style guide you picked at the beginning will probably have you covered in terms of punctuation and grammar. What it can’t cover is your sentence length. Most sentences in first drafts err on the longer side — we tend to use more conjunctions than necessary to connect phrases and ideas that are interlinked. However, it’s often easier for readers to take in the details bit by bit. 

Aim for 20-30 words sentences, which should max out at about two lines in the standard Times New Roman, 12-point font. Anything longer than 50 words should be avoided as much as possible. 

Looking for more tips to refine your nonfiction writing? Reedsy editor Jenn Lien shared plenty in this seminar! 

Self-edits all done? That means you’re ready for the next steps of your publishing journey. The next question to ask yourself is how you’ll be putting this book of yours into the world: will it be through a publisher, or will you produce the book independently? There’s a lot to consider when debating the pros and cons of traditional and self-publishing , but as a nonfiction writer, you might find doing it yourself beneficial, because:

• Publishing is much faster without having to go through agents and publishers;
• You probably have or are building an online presence already and can use that to effectively get your book out there ;
• You get most of the royalties. 

That said, we’ll share some tips to get you ready for either pathway below. And if you’re still on the fence about the next steps, maybe this little quiz can help you out! 

Is self-publishing or traditional publishing right for you?

Takes one minute!

Self-publishing 

If you’ve decided to become an indie author , here are some things you might want to do once you finish your manuscript. (Remember that although you’re self-publishing, you won’t have to do everything by yourself! Professional help is at hand.) 

✍ Hire an editor (if you haven’t already). At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we can’t recommend hiring a professional editor enough. A fresh perspective will always help when it comes to the nitty gritty details. 

🎨 Work with a professional cover designer. In the digital age, the decision to buy a book is arguably more heavily influenced by the appeal of the cover — it’s the thumbnails on Amazon that do much of the work! Artistic book covers like these are guaranteed to catch the eye of browsers, which is why you should definitely work with a designer. 

🌐 Get to know Amazon. We know, its influence on our lives is uncanny, but there’s hardly a better place to reach your audience than Amazon. From printing the books to promoting it, there are all the tools you need on this platform to achieve self-publishing success. This guide on Amazon self-publishing will shed some light on how that can be done. 

Traditional publishing 

Going down the traditional route means that the publisher will take care of most areas of finishing up the product, from the edit to cover design. However, to get to that point, you’ll need to follow some pretty standard steps. 

📬 Query an agent. Most large publishers don’t accept unsolicited submissions from authors, meaning they require representation from a literary agent. Some resources we have for those looking to query are:

• How to Write a Nonfiction Query Letter (blog post)
• The Best Nonfiction Literary Agents to Submit to (directory) 

📖 Submit a book proposal. Together with an agent, you’ll have to pitch a publisher with a book proposal. This proposal includes your book’s synopsis, its target audience and competitive titles, as well as a sample of one or two of the chapters. So while you don’t need a complete manuscript before you submit, a rough draft will no doubt be helpful. For a bit more detail on the process, check out our free course on how to submit a nonfiction proposal. 

Free course: How to submit a book proposal

Get publishers excited about your nonfiction book in this 10-day online course.

Now that you know how to write a nonfiction book, the publishing world is your oyster! Whatever path you take, we wish you the best of luck. And if you do decide to publish, we can’t wait to see what you’ve created. 

David Irvine says:

05/12/2019 – 16:58

I self-published all my books for free using the Amazon KDP software. It was a bit of a high learning curve but worth the time and effort. You can also create a really nice front cover using their cover creator. Anyway, nice write up with plenty of good tips for writers seeking to get published.

Comments are currently closed.

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How to Master Narrative Nonfiction – A Guide to Telling Great True Stories

by Harry Wallett

Do you have an incredible true story but are unsure how to tell it? Indeed, personal accounts can be difficult to write if they’re too personal. So, consider the approach of narrative nonfiction writers who reveal their true stories through the devices relied on by fiction writers. 

There are undoubtedly many ways to tell personal stories – you might choose to stick directly to the facts and give a straightforward account of the real-life events leading to the story’s climax. Or you might consider a more creative approach to bringing your story to life. 

This article is about narrative nonfiction and literary techniques you might consider borrowing from fiction storytelling. We’ll share some great examples of narrative nonfiction encompassing true crime, travel writing, and serial killer tales that have contributed to this increasingly popular genre.

What is the definition of narrative nonfiction?

Narrative nonfiction is often referred to as literary nonfiction or creative nonfiction, and these terms are used to describe true stories written in the typical style of a fiction novel. 

Some narrative nonfiction examples:

• Seabiscuit: An American Legend  by Laura Hillenbrand – the story of a real-life racehorse and its rise to success during World War II. 
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks  by Rebecca Skloot – written through intense research of interview and meeting transcripts, photos, and notes from a real-world event.
• In Cold Blood  by Truman Capote – attributed as the piece that changed literary journalism, using true crime events with fiction storytelling techniques. One man’s journey into the depths of crime and its consequences.

Narrative nonfiction writers aim to take the facts of true events and compellingly tell them – in the way that fiction writers make creative choices about how they reveal revelations and plot points. 

And while there’s an emphasis on storytelling, the best narrative nonfiction books rely on the truth as much as possible. 

What Is the Difference Between Nonfiction Narratives and Memoir?

Good question! 

While memoir and narrative nonfiction aim for factually accurate storytelling, there are some significant differences in the mediums. 

What is a memoir?

A memoir uses a first-person narrator regaling personal stories, seeking the emotional truth. Memoir writers examine and re-evaluate the events of their lives rather than simply retell the story parrot-fashion. 

And while memoir usually tells a story with a linear narrative (in order of the events as they happened), the medium is most interesting when the writer views their own experiences through a critical lens. 

This provides the reader with a deeper understanding of the writer’s motivations, driving the success or failure that drives the narrative. The writer might identify significant moments in the story, reflecting on how things  could  have been if they hadn’t made a particular decision. 

What is narrative nonfiction? 

Narrative nonfiction is similar to memoir in that it’s a true story written to convey real events, but it uses significant creative license in the telling. Stylistically, narrative nonfiction is closer to a fictional novel. 

Narrative nonfiction requires a lot of research as the writer needs to understand every angle of the characters’ motivations and objectives within the prism of the specific world of the story. 

Factual and well researched

A narrative nonfiction writer will use extensive research techniques, such as:

• Extensive interviews  – exploring the story from every possible angle through the people who were there
• Newspaper articles and news reports  – helping the writer understand the popular interpretation or events
• Geological history  – recognizing the significance of location in a historical context 
• Personal essays or journals  – analyzing first-person accounts from the protagonists and central characters of the action 

Which techniques do narrative nonfiction books borrow from literary fiction?

A remarkable fictional novel has great characters with clear objectives, a problem that leads to a crisis, and a confrontation that leads to a resolution. And narrative nonfiction books rely heavily on these tropes to regale a true story in an exciting way. 

Let’s look at those in a little more detail:

Narrative nonfiction needs fascinating characters

The narrative nonfiction writer gathers personal experience from the principal “characters” in the story. They seek out the truth and make creative decisions regarding the details of the characters’ pasts that may have contributed to their significant actions in the true story. 

A compelling character has:

• An objective  – something they want that they believe will help solve the problem of the world
• A redemption arc  – something in the past that haunts them and drives them to redeem themselves
• A fatal flaw  – something that threatens their ultimate success (some kind of self-destructive behavior, such as addiction or poor life choices)

Narrative nonfiction needs a problem, a crisis, and a confrontation

In creative fiction, a character is nothing without a problem to overcome. In great novels, the problem of the world is almost insurmountable – it requires the protagonist to go on a journey of self-discovery to overcome the obstacles holding them back from self-actualization. 

What is the structure of narrative nonfiction books?

In a literary fiction novel, the problem of the world drives the character’s objective, and this kickstarts our storyline structure. 

The second part of the story is where the protagonist pursues their objective and achieves it, but this turns the problem into a crisis because the pursuit didn’t solve it. 

So, the story’s third section forces the protagonist to confront the problem head-on. But they often fail, or the problem becomes too complicated to overcome. Typically, they hit  the reverse climax  (or their low point) at this stage. 

And that low point drives the protagonist to make the final confrontation in the fourth section of the story, truly addressing the problem holding them back at the novel’s beginning.

Of course, in real life, stories don’t always have a happy ending, so the fourth section – the confrontation – can equally result in failure as success. 

And the narrative nonfiction genre is most successful when the writer considers these storytelling elements. 

Some great narrative nonfiction books for you to read

Some of your best learning as a writer comes from your dedication to reading. So, it’s always helpful to be well-read in the creative genre you seek to pursue. I think these books find the right balance between fact and fiction.

The right balance between fact and fiction

If you’re new to the narrative nonfiction genre, check out our top recommendations:

Best-selling books to read

Hidden figures  by margot lee shetterly .

You might have seen the 2016 movie starring Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, and Kevin Costner, about the team of brilliant black women who significantly contributed to launching the first rockets into space. 

This story has it all:

• An insurmountable world problem.
• Clear-cut objectives of the principal characters.
• Intense obstacles to overcome.
• A compelling story that drives you all the way through to the end. 

A brilliant read. 

My Friend Anna  by Rachel DeLoache Williams

A narrative nonfiction book that has inspired a compelling podcast and a Netflix series about Anna Delvey, who swindled her way into the New York art scene, leaving a string of huge debts in her wake. 

This story is driven by a compelling narrative that effectively shines a light on the capitalistic greed that has shaped American history.

Travelling to Infinity  by Jane Hawking 

This is the nonfiction narrative that inspired the 2014 movie,  The Theory of Everything . We follow fascinating and somewhat eccentric characters as we explore the devastating personal life of world-famous British scientist Stephen Hawking, told from the perspective of his wife, Jane Hawking. 

An emotional journey that keeps you hooked to the end.

True stories to engage and educate middle-grade readers

You’re never too young to adopt the narrative nonfiction writing style. Check out some of our recommendations for literary works that rely on stories that explore personal experiences, high-school football, the plight of African Americans, and the American dream. 

Check out these collections of short stories and full-length narrative nonfiction books:

• Mud, Sweat and Tears by Bear Grylls
• The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony
• The Acclaimed Biography of Sean Smith by JK Rowling
• Children of the Blitz by Robert Westall
• Alma’s Suitcase by Karen Levine
• Nothing is Impossible by Christopher Reeve
• If Only They Could Talk by James Herriot
• The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
• The Last Rhinos by Rose Humphreys

Want to Learn More About Writing Narrative nonfiction?

Check out  Cascadia’s blog  for tons of helpful articles that help develop your skills in writing narrative nonfiction books with high-quality narratives. 

We help ambitious people who want to kickstart their book careers, helping time-pressed people connect with reputable publishing professionals. 

Find out more about Cascadia  here . 

Harry Wallett is the Managing Director of Cascadia Author Services. He has a decade of experience as the Founder and Managing Director of Relay Publishing, which has sold over 3 million copies of books in all genres for its authors, and looks after a team of 50+ industry professionals working across the world.

Harry is inspired by the process of book creation and is passionate about the stories and characters behind the prose. He loves working with the writers and has shepherded 1000s of titles to publication over the years. He knows first-hand what it takes to not only create an unputdownable book, but also how to get it into the hands of the right readers for success.

Books are still one of the most powerful mediums to communicate ideas and establish indisputable authority in a field, boosting your reach and stature. But publishing isn’t a quick and easy process—nor should it be, or everyone would do it!

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The Finest Narrative Non-Fiction Essays

Narrative essays that I consider ideal models of the medium

• Linguistics

Authors like , , , , , and epitomise this way of writing.

I'm not a Writer , but I write to explore other things – anthropology, weird cultural quirks in the web development community, interaction design, and the rising field of " tools for thought ". These things are all factual and grounded in reality, but have interesting stories twisted around them. Ones I'm trying to tell in my little notes and essays.

Perhaps you're the same kind of non- Writer writer. The playful amateur kind who uses it to explore and communicate ideas, rather than making the medium part of your identity. But even amateurs want to be good. I certainly want to get good.

Knowing what you like is half the battle in liking what you create. In that spirit, I collect narrative non-fiction essays that I think are exceptional. They're worth looking at closely – their opening moves, sentence structure, turns of phrase, and narrative arcs.

The only sensible way to improve your writing is by echoing the work of other writers. Good artists copy and great artists steal quotes from Picasso.

You may want to start your own collection of lovely essays like this. There will certainly be some Real Writers who find my list trite and full of basic, mainstream twaddle. It probably is. I've done plenty of self-acceptance work and I'm okay with it.

Twaddle aside, the essays below are worth your attention.

by Paul Ford

Paul Ford explains code in 38,000 words and somehow makes it all accessible, technically accurate, narratively compelling, and most of all, culturally insightful and humanistic.

I have unreasonable feelings about this essay. It is, to me, perfect. Few essays take the interactive medium of the web seriously, and this one takes the cake. There is a small blue cube character, logic diagrams, live code snippets to run, GIFs, tangential footnotes, and a certificate of completion at the end.

by David Foster Wallace – Published under the title 'Shipping Out'

Forgive me for being a David Foster Wallace admirer. The guy had issues, but this account of his 7-day trip on a luxury cruiseliner expresses an inner monologue that is clarifying, rare and often side-splittingly hilarious.

He taught me it is 100% okay to write an entire side-novel in your footnotes if you need to.

by David Graeber

Graeber explores play and work from an anthropological perspective. He's a master of moving between the specific and the general. Between academic theory and personal storytelling. He's always ready with armfuls of evidence and citations but doesn't drown you in them.

by Malcolm Gladwell

This piece uses a typical Gladwellian style. He takes a fairly dull question – Why had ketchup stayed the same, while mustard comes in dozens of varieties? – and presents the case in a way that makes it reasonably intriguing. He's great at starting with specific characters, times and places to draw you in. There are always rich scenes, details, personal profiles, and a grand narrative tying it all together.

Some people find the classic New Yorker essay format overdone, but it relies on storytelling techniques that consistently work.

by Mark Slouka

by Joan Didion

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• Date: March 10, 2020
• Author: Victoria Sherrow
• Category: Writing for Adults Blog
• Tags: Craft , nonfiction , research tips , writing for adults blog

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Using quotes in narrative nonfiction.

“They say. What say they? Let them say.” These words appear beneath a gallery at “The Red House,” a stately Victorian home-turned-hotel in Bournemouth, England. This house was designed in 1877 by the famous socialite and actress Lillie Langtry as a private retreat. With those eight words, Langtry indicated that she didn’t mind what people said about her, but these same words offer useful ideas for nonfiction writers. We often care a great deal what people say, so we spend time searching for words spoken by experts, historical figures, and other subjects of our nonfiction in order to quote them to include when writing a nonfiction novel or article .

The Value of Quotes

If you think about the nonfiction you have read with interest, chances are the author used quotes effectively. Similar to dialogue in fiction scenes, quotes add life and variety along with “show; don’t tell.” Quotes can sum up key points and reflect the tone and/or themes. They give works of narrative nonfiction the sense of sound as readers “hear” people talking. Quotes can also add visual variety on the page. Readers notice quotation marks, so quotes can renew their interest as they move forward.

Quotes present ideas in the speaker’s own words, unfiltered, so readers don’t just hear about them second-hand.

Imagine the difference between an author’s description of how it felt to be a child laborer in a nineteenth-century textile mill vs. quotes from the young people themselves. Or for example, if an author wrote, “In President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first inaugural address, in 1933, he said don’t be afraid of anything except of being afraid.” Paraphrasing is not as powerful as quoting his speech, “…the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself…”

Quotes from the people covered in an article or book help readers get to know them better—their personalities, attitudes, values, thoughts, and feelings.

Consider how these quotes from George Washington Carver reveal his values: “It is simply service that measures success.” and “How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.”

Quotes can bolster the opinions or conclusions in your nonfiction.

Quotes from respected authorities and experts add credibility to those points the author wants to make. Likewise, quotes from people with diverse opinions can help readers understand the pros and cons of a situation and the different sides of an issue.

Quotes can add authentic emotion.

Consider the following passages: Author statement: After Holland surrendered on March 15, 1940, German troops marched triumphantly through the streets, sparking fears among the Dutch, especially those who were Jewish, since people had heard about how the Nazis treated Jews.

Quote: Ida Vos was eight years old on March 15, 1940. She later wrote about what happened after Holland surrendered and German troops reached her city: “They are marching and singing songs that have words I don’t understand. ‘They’re going to kill all the Jews!’ shouts my mother. I am afraid. I have a stomachache. I am Jewish.”

•    Quotes can provide good openings and conclusions.

Author and literary agent Lisa Collier Cool suggests, “Since quotes also make excellent openers and closers, look for unusually provocative, insightful, or profound remarks for possible leads or conclusions.” These can be startling statements or words that engage the reader’s emotions or curiosity. Sometimes an ironic quote is effective. For example, I began a book about the Great Depression with these prophetic words from the great humorist and newspaper columnist Will Rogers, written on the eve of the Depression in September 1929: “No nation in the history of the world was ever sitting so pretty. If we want anything, all we have to do is go and buy it on credit. So that leaves us without any economic problem whatever, except perhaps someday to have to pay for them. But we are certainly not thinking about that this early.”

•    Ending with quotes can wrap up the material in a satisfying way.

At the end of a biography, a quote from the subject, or from someone who knew them, might sum up the subject’s philosophy of life or legacy. A final quote might also offer advice or inspiration. Lisa Collier Cool adds, “Quotes that offer startling predictions about the future often provide natural yet dramatic last words for your piece.” But experts warn writers not to end with quotes that are so surprising or disconnected from what came before that they leave readers confused.

To Quote or Not to Quote?

Choosing and using quotations obviously depends on the nature of the nonfiction work. In general, use quotations when your own words would not be as effective, because the quote is worded so well and expresses the point with power and clarity. For nonfiction that involves controversy and debates, find quotes from respected authorities and experts, and from those with differing opinions.

Don’t use quotes just to state basic facts, such as names, dates, statistics, or other information you can easily state yourself. Also don’t waste space quoting trivialities. It doesn’t matter if the subject of your interview remarks on the weather if that has nothing to do with your topic.

Avoid using too many quotes as well. They should enhance, not overwhelm, the material.

Things to Remember

Along with accuracy, make sure quotes relate clearly to the surrounding material. Readers should not have to stop and wonder why the quote is there. It should serve a clear purpose and fit smoothly into the “storyline” or discussion, so don’t add a quote just because you really like it or think it’s time for another quote.

Connect the quote to the material with transitions and identifying information. Don’t just place it in a paragraph with no introduction. If readers see words in quotation marks with no speaker tag line or source, they might wonder if this is an actual quote. Maybe the author punctuated the segment incorrectly or is quoting another author’s text?

Certain words and phrases can alert readers to a quotation. For instance; •    As Dr. X explains in the May 2018 issue of Medical Science , [“quote”]. •    In his book All About Writing , Author X stresses the importance of accuracy, saying, [“quote”]. •    After examining the evidence, X concluded [“quote”].

Where Say They?

As with all nonfiction, research is vital for identifying quotes and interview sources. Search with a purpose. Who has information? How can you obtain it? How will it fit into your nonfiction “story”? Depending on your subject, start with the usual primary sources, including letters, diaries, interviews, speeches, and reminiscences, along with solid secondary sources. Dig deeper if necessary. Check local historical societies, schools, and universities. Look for sources in the footnotes of published works. You can learn more about diverse sources by checking out the source notes and bibliographies in respected nonfiction books, such as Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit: An American Legend.

For interviews, prepare well and structure questions beforehand. Pick promising interview subjects. For example, while writing about archaeology in ancient Africa, I interviewed an archaeologist who took part in excavations in Mali, where her team discovered West Africa’s oldest known city. I read about her in an archaeological journal and then contacted the university where she taught.

Let Them Say

Quotes are an important tool for narrative nonfiction writers, so as you craft nonfiction, put them to work for you. Go treasure-hunting for those quotable gems that will make your work more informative, entertaining, and meaningful. Then, if the quote fits…use it.

Are your quotes packing a punch in your nonfiction work? Let our one-one instructors help you write effective nonfiction. Take our assessment and be matched with a mentor to fit your goals!

Related Links

• Imagery in Narrative Nonfiction
• Nonfiction That Doesn’t Get Old
• Focus and Slant: Key Elements for Nonfiction
• Effective Endings for Nonfiction

Victoria Sherrow has published short stories, articles and books (fiction and nonfiction) for readers aged preschool through adult. Her books have received starred reviews and been honored by the American Library Association, Parents Choice Gold Award, National Association for the Advancement of Science, and NYPL Best Books for the Teenage, among others. Victoria has taught at The Institute of Children’s Literature for more than 25 years and has also been an assistant editor and writing contest judge. Recently, she revised and polished a 230,000-word book for adults.

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