Nonfiction Provides More than Material

Writing creatively is a strange pursuit. The very idea of manufacturing characters and places to fill the imagination has led many to simply ignore the flights of fancy which decorate our bookstores. Even among the most famous and intelligent thinkers of our history, there have been those who scoff at ideas which go against the grain of our current reality. As the physicist Lord Kelvin once said, "Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax."

This is the reality we face as writers - our fiction will be questioned until proven "real." And by real I mean that readers can pick up a book and be absorbed by the pages. The world described within will be realistic enough to feel plausible and perhaps even preferable to this dull reality we live each day.

To accomplish this, we must write stories which are both realistic and relevant. We must craft stories which have a strong ring of truth to them. The characters must act and sound like real people. The events must be fantastic enough to be compelling, but not so fantastic as to be utterly unbelievable.

This is where nonfiction comes in. As a writing field, true nonfiction is a very different art from fiction and poetry and even memoir. Although nonfiction requires imagination and creativity to pull in the readers, the demand for facts and accuracy drives many writers to avoid this kind of writing. And I feel it myself - there is a fear that I might report something amiss, a "fact" which isn't a fact at all. Or, worse, credit a quote to the wrong individual, or forget to credit a discovery to someone very important. Worries like this have led me on a path away from journalism and, in some respects, away from literature. One reason I enjoy writing science fiction is the greater separation from reality. Why write a botched story about Communist China when I can craft a magnificent tale of a communal civilization on another planet?

Unfortunately, this attitude is self-defeating. Writing fantastic stories for the sake of avoiding reality seriously undercuts the prime authority of all writing, fiction included. Without a grounding in the reality with which our readers are familiar, the incredible elements of our stories gain no traction in the imagination. We lose our readers before ever winning them over.

For this reason, it's critical that every writer - from the speculative fiction afficionado to the otherworldly poet and on to the most senile memoirists - read nonfiction.

The primary benefit of nonfiction reading lies in the combination of facts and storytelling. Although textbooks are dry and many news articles are too dense, the best works of nonfiction distill our reality into thoroughly researched and well-told stories. Often, the best nonfiction writers are journalists - they have extensive experience with the vagaries of factual reporting. They understand that reality has not truth, but a different truth for each observer.

Understanding and using this fact is essential for memorable fiction. What is narrative voice if not a single take on reality, separated somewhat from the thoughts of our protagonists? What would a memoir accomplish if, in the end, it extablished a firm and irrefutable truth? Could such objectivity really convey the fears and uncertainty of childhood? And then there's poetry - an art centered on perception and interpretation. There is no firm reality, but there is the solid feeling that something is real.

This, then, is the reason nonfiction reading should be a critical component of your development as a writer. Aside from the useful facts and observations you will learn (yes, reality...a terrible thing to know), nonfiction will expose you to the thoughts, motives, and perceptions that drive us as human beings. And this will strengthen your creative work in ways you might not see otherwise.