Writing About Yourself - Applying What You Know About Fiction to Your Nonfiction

This guest blog was written by Jonathan O'Connor, a M.F.A. Writing student in Atlanta, Georgia. O'Connor has been published in SCAN Magazine and The Connector, and continues to submit to literary journals across the country. Currently, he is working on a novel and creating a professional portfolio. His inspirations include Lewis Carroll, Angela Carter, Neil Gaiman, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus. O'Connor keeps a blog, Words From a Caterpillar, where he talks about writing, life, and the writing life. 

In second grade my teacher had us keep a journal that we would write in every day for at least fifteen minutes. We could write whatever we wanted, but I always found myself drawn to fiction. I thought my life was too boring. Most of my stories were about dinosaurs that could talk or people with superpowers. Sometimes the two mixed. Those stories were the best.

Although I've scaled it back a bit since then, I have to say that not much has changed. I'm still drawn to fiction, to magic, and the impossible. Through writing I'm able to create worlds, to use my imagination and birth characters that often take a life of their own. Because of this, I always made fiction my focus. I believed it was the only venue to release the creativity inside me. I was wrong.

This past year I found the journal I kept in second grade. I read all the stories I wrote in it. Not to pat myself on the back, but for a second grader, they were pretty good. As I turned the pages I saw that each story was more fantastic than the next. I began to wonder why I so vehemently opposed writing a simple journal entry. Then it occurred to me, although part of my love of fiction is world-building and character creation, I think there is an equally strong side of me that is terrified of nonfiction.

As a fiction writer, I can pick my moments. I can choose to insert my thoughts, feelings, or experiences in a story at my discretion. Nonfiction can be much more personal. By their very nature essays, memoirs, articles, and the like, tend to focus on some aspect of self. Even writing a cookbook can be extremely personal when you think about the role food plays in our lives. Today, however, for the sake of brevity I am going to focus on the personal essay.

When I first entered my writing program my idea of writing an essay was the same as writing a research paper. The funny thing was that I had been reading tons of different types of essays my entire life, but I never cared enough to examine how they were different. Take Walden for example. Sure, Thoreau is tackling a much larger idea about living simply (I know this is an oversimplification), but his collection of essays also rings very personal. He is talking about his experience and ultimately who he is, who he is becoming, and who he wants to be.

A good personal essay does these things. A great personal essay does this and adds aspects of fiction writing to help tell your very nonfiction story.

Here is a cheesy example of how applying your fiction hand can make facts fun:

1. UNAPPLIED: When I was seven I went to the beach for the first time. It was crowded and I got separated from my family. I was scared. 
2. APPLIED: The sand looked like it was steaming. I was holding onto my mother's sweaty palm before she let go. I don't remember why or how, maybe I was distracted by the orange sun or the foaming waves, but within seconds I had lost her. My unheld hand began to shake as older beach-goers surrounded me.

Nonfiction is about communicating facts in a engaging way. The best nonfiction I've read has been so stuffed with this that at times I forgot that what I'm reading is a true life experience. Most recently I've read A Common Pornography by Kevin Sampsell which is completely non-fiction but is so entertaining that I forget how diehard fiction enthusiast I can be. This is true of other books as well (I often get roped into books by Chelsea Handler for beach reads), but no matter the nonfiction, what stands out is that they all follow and much more strongly written and conceived version of "APPLIED" option two. 

In fiction, writers are tasked with creating a world from scratch, filling it with characters, and creating conflict. In nonfiction, much of that has been done for you, but the writer must take the information they have to work with and communicate it is the most creative, vivid, and authentic way possible. Maybe you aren't creating a brand new world for yourself, but to your reader, the nonfiction world you describe can be just as vivid, engaging, heart-wrenching, and new as any fictitious world you could have ever dreamt up.