We’ve gathered the best famous author quotes on writing nonfiction to motivate, inspire and help you write your business-building book.
If uncovering the truth is the greatest challenge of nonfiction writing, it is also the greatest reward.
Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing. Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing.
In this time of the Internet and nonfiction, to be on an actual bookshelf in an actual bookstore is exciting in itself.
I do think that narrative, long-form nonfiction is the perfect form because it’s rooted in something very real, but we’re also, you know, completely spiritual, emotional creatures driven by all sorts of desires and needs.
When you deal with nonfiction, you deal with human characters.
All writers are discontented with their work as it’s being made. That’s because they’re aware of a potential and believe they’re not reaching it. But the reader is not aware of the potential, so it makes no difference to him.
Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.
Whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, writing takes me to another world.
One thing you learn about doing nonfiction is that you’ve got to get it right, fact-check, do your research. You’ve got to not only get the facts right but represent the subject to the world in a way that insiders feel like it’s an access port and outsiders can access it. If you’re too insider, you block access to anyone else.
In nonfiction, you have that limitation, that constraint, of telling the truth.
The challenge for a nonfiction writer is to achieve a poetic precision using the documents of truth but somehow to make people and places spring to life as if the reader was in their presence.
The privilege of being a writer is that you have this opportunity to slow down and to consider things.
Most books aren’t pure nonfiction or fiction.
In Bosnian, there’s no distinction in literature between fiction and nonfiction; there’s no word describing that.
Maybe stories are just data with a soul.
In fiction, when you paint yourself into a corner, you can write a pair of suction cups onto the bottoms of your shoes and walk up the wall and out the skylight and see the sun breaking through the clouds. In nonfiction, you don’t have that luxury.
There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there’s only narrative.
Truth is stranger than nonfiction. And life is too interesting to be left to journalists. People have stories, but journalists have ‘takes,’ and it’s their takes that usually win out when the stories are too complicated or, as happens, not complicated enough.
Nonfiction writers are the packhorses of literature. We’re meant to carry the story. If we can make it up and down the mountain by a reliable if not scenic route, we have delivered. Technique is optional.
I still believe nonfiction is the most important literature to come out of the second half of the 20th century.
Nonfiction is both easier and harder to write than fiction. It’s easier because the facts are already laid out before you, and there is already a narrative arc. What makes it harder is that you are not free to use your imagination and creativity to fill in any missing gaps within the story.
Non fiction is never going to die.
We often think that language mirrors the world in which we live, and I find that’s not true. The language actually makes the world in which we live. Language is not – I mean, things don’t have any mutable value by themselves; we ascribe them a value.
When I’m writing fiction I’m thinking, God, this is so hard – I have to make all this stuff up! I wish I were writing a nonfiction book where all the facts are laid out and I don’t have to be so much at sea.
Writing a nonfiction story is like cracking a safe. It seems impossible at the beginning, but once you’re in, you’re in.
An author’s ability to bring a marketing synopsis to the table – along with a great manuscript – makes a difference in what books get picked up. This is true for both fiction and nonfiction titles. You need to show your publisher what you’ve got in your marketing arsenal.
Nonfiction requires enormous discipline. You construct the terms of your story, and then you stick to them.
What I felt was, if you spend your life just writing fiction, you are going to falsify your material. And the fictional form was going to force you to do things with the material, to dramatize it in a certain way. I thought nonfiction gave one a chance to explore the world, the other world, the world that one didn’t know fully.
One of my favorite things, as a critic, was finding books by new writers who possessed a distinctive voice and vision, an inventive gift for storytelling. I also loved immersing myself in works of nonfiction that taught me something about the world, that made the past come alive or shed light on hidden corners of history or the news.
You can tell a more over-the-top incredible story if you use a nonfiction form.
What I felt was, if you spend your life just writing fiction, you are going to falsify your material. And the fictional form was going to force you to do things with the material, to dramatize it in a certain way. I thought nonfiction gave one a chance to explore the world, the other world, the world that one didn’t know fully.
I enjoy doing the research of nonfiction; that gives me some pleasure, being a detective again.
One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.
“Great brands and great businesses have to be great storytellers, too. We have to tell stories – emotive, compelling stories – and even more so because we’re nonfiction.”
Like most writers, I find the Web is a wonderful distraction. Who doesn’t need that last minute research before writing?
Every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn’t have before. Not two thoughts, or five – just one. So decide what single point you want to leave in the reader’s mind.
In fiction, you learn about pacing and how to build tension – which is something you want in a really good nonfiction feature article as well.
Nonfiction, to me, feels like an argument, whereas a novel is like a series of questions.
Remember, whatever type of nonfiction you are writing, as William Saroyan so aptly said:
“All writers are discontented with their work as it’s being made. That’s because they’re aware of a potential and believe they’re not reaching it. But the reader is not aware of the potential, so it makes no difference to him.”
Want help writing your nonfiction book?
We specialize in Business books, health and wellness, educational guides, and hybrid memoirs.
According to Indeed, there are twenty-five types of nonfiction writing.
Here is how they define and categorize the kind of books we work on:
Business
Business books often serve as guides about management and entrepreneurship. The authors of this genre have experience in the market or industry and share their tips, expertise or methods with readers.
Health and wellness
Health and wellness books cover topics such as stress management, sleeping habits or diet. They can address physical, mental or spiritual health. They can also offer methods or plans to change or improve health. Authors of health and wellness nonfiction are often doctors and researchers with technical knowledge, or they can be healers and health coaches.
Educational Guides
Educational guides give college and high school students advice about various topics. Others target an older audience. Educational guides can describe different types of education or educate readers about various topics.
Hybrid Memoirs
Memoirs tell a story about the author’s life. Memoirs focus on an event, such as childhood or an experience in a specific industry. Autobiographies describe the writer’s experience on their entire life’s journey. While anyone can write a memoir, autobiographies are typically the works of famous people, allowing them to share their opinions and journeys with their followers. Hybrid memoirs are a combination of the author’s story and the lessons they have learned from their experiences.
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