Writing Engaging and Interesting Non-Fiction Stories Without Embellishing the Truth

"Telling a story" can mean different things to different people (and writers), and how a story should be told usually depends on the circumstances under, and reasons for, which it that story is being told. Within the context of creative writing, writers can tell a story any way they prefer. Some choose to write fiction. Some prefer fiction based on fact. Some present their story as non-fiction when, in fact, it is embellished (a little or a lot).

Non-fiction story-telling can be a challenge for the writer who prefers to keep fiction and non-fiction distinctly separate. Many non-fiction stories can run the risk of seeming uninteresting, or lacking in depth, to either the writer or the reader. An added aspect and challenge to writing non-fiction stories is that it isn't just the writer's skill that is at stake. It can be the writer's credibility as a writer, reputation in general, and unintended consequences that can occur as a result of presenting a story about something that happened in real life.

Why anyone is telling or writing any real-life story makes a big difference is how that story is told. If, for example, the story is presented to a local police investigator after an incident; nobody's interested in anything but the facts (and nothing but the facts). The maturity level and "depth-of-thinking level" of anyone hearing or reading a non-fiction story can also be important when it comes to how well the story will be received. Those of us who are parents have probably made the mistake of having a child seem interested in some event we say happened to us, only to figure out that our child may have been interested in one, isolated, aspect of the event (as opposed to hearing a whole lot of talk about all the surrounding aspects and implications that resulted from the event). It can, of course, depend on the child (or the reader's) mood at the time he hears/reads the story. An example is the story of our own child's birth. A four-year-old may be interested in hearing only, "Then I saw you. You were such a sweetie. You were screaming like crazy, and I was the happiest person in the world." On the other hand, a more mature child (especially a daughter, maybe) might be more interested in hearing a much more in-depth and all-encompassing version of the story of her own arrival into the world.

The point is, there is no particular set of rules for telling a real-life story in the best, most effective, and/or most well received way. It can depend on the writer, the reader, the story, and/or the circumstances under, and reasons for, which a story is being written and read.


The following thoughts on approaching the writing of real-life stories are nothing more than ways I, personally, approach writing many of my own non-fiction stories:

I don't how useful this will be (especially because I stick with telling non-fiction stories, rather than fiction-based-on-fact type stuff). I don't know how effective, or how successful, my personal approach is; but it does make for a lot of "extra elements" to add to just the facts.

What I do is call upon my memory of how I was experiencing even the smallest thing that took place and/or what any other people around did/said. Whatever I come up with is real, because it was how I experienced something. There's no need to embellish on what went on around me, because I have tons of things going on within my own mind at the time.

If I were telling a story like, "The Day I Had A Flat Tire in Boston" (and all there was to it was that I had a flat tire, waited at a doughnut shop until Triple A came a half hour, and then went on my way) (this didn't happen, by the way ), I'd think back to something like "how cold it was that day". Then I'd add something along the lines of how all I could think about was the poinsettia in the cold car, and how important it had been to me to be able to show up at elderly Aunt Susie's door and surprise her with that plant. Or, I might add something about how the cold, raw, day brought me back to the day of great-grandma's funeral; and how "isn't it funny how something as simple as a flat tire can be made worse when some long-buried sense of abandonment and helplessness somehow makes it way from the past to a very ordinarily and otherwise inconsequential present". (I never knew any great-grandma's by the way.)

So, basically, I'd try to wring the heck out of every last little anything that went on, dig up and expand on, my own reaction to it, and then add some color by trying to "infuse some meaningfulness" into the mix. Of course, I try to be careful to add this stuff in small enough doses that it won't take things too far away from the main story/point. What I think the right amount of this type of stuff can do (if the writer wants to use this approach) is to help even the reader who doesn't identify with that "flat tire in Boston" identify with the writer, and the experience, by finding elements in the situation, and response to it, with which the reader can relate to the writer and some of those other reactions to the situation.

Other elements are how the writer's inner child (or outer child at the time) was thinking/feeling. How the writer now does or doesn't think/feel differently about the same thing. Writing as both the adult and the more buried inner child that still exists can add other elements.

My thing (I don't know if I'm right or wrong about this) is to develop a set of all these different types of "elements", and use each specific type only here and there. I don't like to let the reader figure out that I'm "using an approach" (or at least that I'm trying to, or else what approach, exactly, I'm using). I like to try to take the reader somewhere he wasn't expecting. If I go with with what's "coming out of the mental memory file" (with regard to what I was experiencing), even I may not know what will show up and become that small break from the nitty-gritty part of the story. It may a touch of humor (maybe self-deprecating humor, but not to the point where it "deprecates me to the point where I lose the reader's respect). I often aim to come up with the things that only someone who has lived that story is likely to have experienced. Why? Because someone who has lived through something similar then knows I'm telling the truth. Also, however, a reader who hasn't lived through that experience will reader something he's not likely to have read or heard before. Even if a story about that flat tire in Boston is one of which many readers have their own similar story; if I throw in just a little of that cold-weather/great-grandma stuff, I've given my otherwise uninteresting flat-tire story a little more depth or color here or there. How many (and how much of either) of these extra "elements" should be added can be tricky. I suppose it may come down to percentage of "meat and facts" in the story to percentage of "total additional elements" in most cases.

Some types of stories may only lend themselves to those additional elements being, perhaps, added somewhere near the beginning and somewhere toward the end. On the other hand, some stories that have little to them might (I think do) require a far higher percentage of added elements. A simple and hyperbolic example is this: Suppose I decide to write a story about sitting in a chair and doing nothing. That story will obviously have little to it if I don't add a high percentage of those extra elements to it.

Here's the chair story without those extra elements: "I was sitting in my chair for twenty hours and doing nothing.. I was looking at the four walls." The writer could add, "Here's what's on each of those four walls: _______( and fill in what's on the walls, including that spider, of course). Here's information about the windows I was seeing: ________(and fill in some stuff about the drapes and whether or not the sun was out, of course)." If that writer wants to get "real deep" he might add, "..and I was bored to death". If he wants to be more descriptive he might add, "..and my leg fell asleep, at which time I shifted position and got the circulation back to it".

The point here (in my opinion) is that with a simple, potentially excruciatingly boring, story the best chance such a story has of being at all engaging and interesting is to add that high percentage of "extra elements". Suppose that twenty hours of sitting in a chair took place as the result of the writer's trying to think out some major life problem, or suppose the writer was sitting in that chair because he'd been kidnapped and tied to it. By making the sitting-in-the-chair story nothing more than the foundation for a lot of those "additional elements" in the story, and making that foundation only a small part of the story; the writer can turn what would essentially be "no story" into so much more. So I think percentage of those additional elements very much depends on the substance and subject of the story.

Also, I think it's important to be careful about how such added elements are sprinkled into the story. The aim (and result) shouldn't be to distract the reader from the main story, and it shouldn't be to turn the story into one that covers a bigger mix of things than the main story ought to. If I write a story about my tenth birthday, and lead the reader to believe that's what the story is about, my story shouldn't be about "all the rest of my life too" - only that tenth birthday. So, I would need to think of the things that would make my tenth-birthday story different from anyone else's, but also what would help the reader relate by being similar to a lot of other people's tenth-birthday. "Different" would increase the chances my story might be interesting to someone. "Similar" might increase the chances someone would relate to me, the writer.

Then, however, I would ideally think up those things (those less common "extra elements") that would increase the chances that my story would be unique, have just that much more depth to it, and maybe even be meaningful (even if in some small way) to at least some readers.

I see these extra elements (regardless of what type they are) as, maybe, toppings on ice-cream. Sometimes we don't want any at all. Sometimes we want toppings. If there aren't enough we don't even taste them. If there are too many they smother the ice-cream flavor, and we may as well mix them in and turn the ice-cream flavor into something entirely different from what it starts out as in the first place.

In any case, something I frequently do when writing a real-life story is take the reader just a little bit away from the "meat" of the story for a quick moment, take him a little by surprise, and then
return him safely to the main story. From there, I usually try to let him settle into the main story for awhile before moving him (again, just a little) away and offering another spoonful of those ice-cream sprinkles.

Basically, I try to let the reader in on my experience, rather than just let him be an observer of it. They way I see, anyone could tell his own story about a flat-tire in Boston or his tenth birthday. If I'm writing a story about whatever it is I must think there IS a story to tell in the first place. The only reason I'd believe there is a story in the first place would, most likely, be that the experience had some impact on me and/or my life and/or my thinking. That impact, to me, is what I believe I have (or any writer has) to bring to a story. Using this kind of approach means the writer doesn't need to embellish or turn a story into "fiction-based-on-real-life". To me, this is a way for a writer to express, and preserve, some of those deeper (or more expansive) aspects of even simple events; and make words represent not only one, simple, story; but, instead, represent life and "human-ness" in their deepest and most real forms.

To me, this isn't just non-fiction writing at its best - it's story-telling, and writing, in general, at their best.