NonFic

Happy Wednesday, everyone! I think I’m still slightly in shock that it’s already April. How did that happen so quickly? Seriously. My book comes out next month, and it’s already available for preorder. What?

*sigh* Probably better to focus on the task at hand, eh?

Monday, we talked about fiction. The logical next step then, is to talk about…

Nonfiction

Tell me you saw that coming. Really. I couldn’t think of any better genre to pair with fiction, than it’s polar opposite. It’s not a genre that I spend a ton of time with, if I’m honest, but I have read a lot of it in my lifetime. If you’ve been to college, or you own a computer, then I’m sure you have too. ;-)

So, why do we enjoy it?

For a lot of people, nonfiction is all about learning. Whether it’s a biography, a textbook, or any other form of nonfiction that pops into your head, its primary purpose is to teach. So we enjoy it when we’re actually trying to find out an answer to a question, perhaps.

We’re learning beings. It’s what we like to do, even if we won’t admit it. We like to know the answers to our questions, and for many of us, we want to find out without the quick answers provided by Google. So we turn to books, to nonfiction, to other people’s lives and studies that explain what we’ve been trying to figure out, whether that means turning to the Bible or a biography of Annie Oakley.

Personally, I prefer the Bible.

Basically, nonfiction is designed to teach, so we enjoy it because we want to learn. Simple.

But what do we gain from it?

Seems obvious, right? We gain answers from it. Knowledge. Understanding. And you’d be right: that is obvious. So if your intent is to really have people learn something from what you’re writing, then nonfiction is the way you want to go. Or if you’re looking for something that you strongly desire to learn from, then this is likely the genre you’ll want to turn to.

I told you earlier that I don’t read nonfiction a lot, and in many ways that’s true, but if you think about it, we all read some nonfiction every day. We read online what our friends are doing (if they post it), we read news articles and absorb information from various websites. That’s all nonfiction. And whether we realize it or not, we’re gaining something from it.

My advice is to make sure you’re gaining something good, and not something bad. And if you’re a nonfiction writer, make sure your audience isn’t gaining something negative from your work. The world doesn’t need any more negativity than it already has. Seriously.

[love]

{Rani D.}