If it’s true, does it still have a story?

“I don’t have to worry about building a narrative because my story’s true.”

One of our writing course participants made this point recently. She also felt that she didn’t have to worry about characters, point of view, suspense, or trying to “show” rather than “tell”.

I think it’s a fairly common misconception that you don’t have to “create” a story if you have real-life. You don’t have to worry about characters, because your people are “real”.

Yet successful non-fiction these days does use the narrative skills that used to be associated only with fiction. The story may be true, but the writer uses their creativity to select and order the material into an engaging narrative.

Every story uses some form of suspense, no matter how subtle, to draw the reader through the story. No-one is obliged to read anything, no matter how worthy.

The “characters” may be absolutely clear to those who knew or researched them. But they still have to be developed and shown to the reader through their actions and inactions, their words, their quirks and the texture of their lives.

Because of the recent surge of interest in memoir and biography, we’ve introduced a short course to deal specifically with this genre. Non-fiction writer, Fred de Vries and I will present a course in writing about real lives – both to preserve the past and to make sense of the present.

We will cover the differences between memoir and biography, different styles and approaches in tackling the past. Then we’ll lead participants through effective research methods and how best to organise their material.

We’ll look at ways to structure their narrative and develop characters.  And then they’ll discover practical techniques to “show” these lives to their readers, avoiding too much long-winded exposition.

All of this will take a weekend, after which the participants will go off to practise what we’ve preached. We will reconvene after a month for a one-day review and feedback session on their first attempts.

The next biography and memoir course will begin on March 6. For more information, contact Trish Urquhart on . Information on the different courses run by allaboutwriting can be found on http://www.allaboutwritingcourses.com.