Storycraft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction

"Storytelling is one of the few traits common to all human societies. A sequence of actions, a sympathetic character, a complication, a resolution-the key ingredients in a story are as familiar to us today as they were to our ancestors. Although we may associate the form with fictional narratives such as novels and movies, the same ingredients also underlie the best nonfiction works, including those by David Grann, Mary Roach, Tracy Kidder, and John McPhee. In the first edition of Storycraft, Jack Hart illustrated how these and other nonfiction writers, including many he coached over decades at the Oregonian, used the ingredients of story to create compelling and award-winning works of narrative nonfiction. For this revision, he has expanded the field to consider how storytelling techniques can be used in therapidly growing nonfiction form of podcasting. He has added insights from recent research into storytelling and the brain, illustrating how facts and arguments effectively embedded in narrative are more likely to stick in readers' minds. And he has added new examples of effective nonfiction narratives"--