Fiction vs. Non-Fiction

Writing fiction and writing non-fiction must be severely different, right? After all, authors of fiction rarely write non-fiction and few writers of non-fiction also write fiction. Well, that’s not quite correct — fiction authors often also write books about writing these days or have a blog, like this one, and write about writing in it. So what are the differences between writing fiction and writing non-fiction? Are there differences? Well, obviously, but they might not be that big.

There’s not that much of a difference, as it were. A good non-fiction book should entertain while you’re also learning something new. A good fiction book might teach you a few things you’ve not known before, even if it’s just a few words or a few details about a place or time you’ve never seen.
Fiction might seem to be ‘just imagination’ and nothing more, but as an author, I can assure you that one of the four jobs I continually cycle between is ‘research’ (the other three are writing, editing, and plotting). If you don’t do your research about real things you need to incorporate, be it objects or time periods, your readers will know. One or more of them will know about that time period or will be experienced fencers and know you’re winging it and be angry about it and, this being the time of the internet, they’ll tell everyone about it, too.
In addition to that, non-fiction needs to be written well, needs to be written in an entertaining way, if you don’t want people to just put your book aside or never buy it in the first place. Even textbooks usually try to be readable these days and not just stuffed with facts. It’s much easier to get students to read a textbook if they’re feeling entertained than if every sentence is a torture.
Fiction needs to have its facts right and non-fiction needs to be written engagingly.

The main focus of fiction is creativity. The author creates characters, setting, and plot and weaves them together into a story which others find entertaining. A lot of what is in a novel, novella, or short story has no basis in facts. It is not based on a real character, it is only using a specific time period (including the present) as a backdrop, and doesn’t follow real-life events (not completely, at any rate; even a story ‘based on real-life events’ will invent some of its content).
Yet, every story also has details which are based in facts. Your spy will drive a car and that car can only do what a car can do. Your medieval monk will follow the daily schedule of his order and that is something you can and should look up first, even if you modify it. Your fashionista will make comments on the current fashion or specific types of dresses that fit specific body types, which should also be based on reality. You don’t have to go the YA way and throw all the different brand names around, but if you use something, you should know how it can be used or what it looks like.

Non-fiction, in comparison, is steeped in facts. On the other hand, humans do not react well to only being presented with the facts. We’re hard-wired in our brains to respond better to stories than to facts alone, which is why we have newspaper articles and tell our friends all about how we were almost late for work this morning. To be read, non-fiction needs to have a certain entertainment value. The term ‘edutainment’ isn’t wrong — entertaining and educating don’t exclude each other, they should go hand in hand, if possible.
I’ve read a load of books on writing over the last decade or so, ever since I got back into writing in a more serious way, and even those which promote writing processes I don’t use have been helpful. In addition, I have read books on the history of writing (like the fun and informative “Monster, She Wrote”) or books meant to make fictional books more understandable (like “The Jane Austen Handbook” which is filled with details about the life of landed gentry in the Regency period). I’ve learned from all of them and some have given me new ideas (“The Jane Austen Handbook” sparked the basic ideas for this year’s August release “The Haunting of Winterthorne Hall”).
A good non-fiction book will entertain you as much as a good fiction book and will use similar techniques to keep you reading, too.

Last week, I published a blog post about the good writing of the “Dresden Files” by Jim Butcher. I focused on three techniques which he uses, two of which are also applicable for non-fiction.
A lot of people who write their first scientific essay for school or college or university try to sound knowledgeable by using big words and specific expressions. They think that using a lot of language which only insiders will understand makes the text sound more scientific. The opposite is the case. If you have understood your subject, you can write about it as well in regular, everyday language as in insider slang. If you have that understanding, you should use simple, everyday language. One thing which writers of non-fiction who are good at it say is along the lines of ‘write the text as if it were a letter to a friend who doesn’t have the slightest idea about the topic.’ That’s a very good suggestion for everyone who goes ahead and writes non-fiction. Keep the language simple.
The second thing which is applicable is to create a connection between the different chapters of your text. I mentioned how Butcher does that by ending on an interesting or curious note. The same is possible with a non-fiction text — just end a chapter by suggesting that the topic of this chapter and the topic of the next are connected. They should be, of course, but most non-fiction books follow a through-line which introduces topics based on the ones before, so it shouldn’t be hard.

Fiction and non-fiction are not as far from each other as you might be thinking. Humans need stories to understand the world, so non-fiction needs storytelling as much as fiction does. The main difference is the freedom to change things which does not exist in non-fiction. In fiction, you research details, but create your own narrative. In non-fiction, the facts create the narrative which you can then follow to make things interesting for the reader.