4 tips for writing narrative non-fiction and memoir
BY Wyl Menmuir
29th Aug 2024
Wyl Menmuir is an award-winning novelist and narrative non-fiction writer. His first novel, The Many, was longlisted for the Booker Prize and his first non-fiction book, The Draw of The Sea, the first in a trilogy of books exploring our relationships with the natural world, won the Roger Deakin Award for nature writing. His latest work, The Heart of The Woods is a deep exploration of our relationships with trees, woodlands and wood, and blurs boundaries between memoir, nature writing and social history.
Wyl is also the tutor for our Writing Memoir & Narrative Non-Fiction course with weekly Zoom lesson, workshops and tutorials.
Here, Wyl reveals four top tips for aspiring narrative non-fiction writers and memoirists.
1. Listen
Readers can always tell when a writer is on transmit mode – telling a story without having really listened carefully first. It always pays, in the early stages of writing a memoir or narrative non-fiction book, to listen to others’ stories, to the landscape, time and place about which you want to write, to really ensure you’re going to connect with readers. Even if what you’re writing is very personal to you, you can gain a lot by listening to others’ perspectives on it.
2. Immerse yourself
While they are reading your book, you want readers to be fully engaged with the story. What this means practically, especially in the research phrase of writing, is immersing yourself in the sensory details of the time, place and subject. When I was writing The Draw of The Sea, I spent as much time as I could in, on, under and around the water as possible, taking notes after each immersion on the specifics and particulars of my experience and the ways I heard others describe it. For my latest book, most of my research time was spent in woodlands, absorbing the small details of sound, smell, taste and sight that would bring the book to life.
3. Read outside your lane
Sure, you want to ensure you’re reading a lot of work in the area in which you’re writing, though memoirists and narrative non-fiction writers can learn a lot from reading novels and short stories too. Essentially, we’re all after the same thing – a good story, well told. You have the good story – that’s what’s driving you – now learn about ‘well told’, through gleaning techniques and structure not just from other non-fiction writers, but from short story writers, journalists, poets, and flash fiction writers too.
4. Know what sits at the heart of your book
Ask yourself this one question over and over again, throughout the process of researching, writing and editing: ‘What is this book really about?’. Write your answer in a single sentence that starts, ’This is a book about…’. Keep it to one sentence, simple enough that it would explain the book to anyone who asked, but specific enough that it distinguishes your book from others that have similar themes. You might not nail it on a first go (in fact, you probably won’t!). I write my single sentences on post-it notes and stick them above my desk. Every time I open my work-in-progress, I look at the post-it and ask myself if that’s still the book I’m writing. If there’s a gap between that sentence and my manuscript, I can then make two choices: change the post-it or change the manuscript. By the end of the process, though, I want those two things – my single sentence and my finished book, to reflect each other exactly. This simple practice helps to keep me on track when I’m in danger of wandering too far from the path.
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