How to Inject Personality into Non-Fiction Writing
Many find the taste of medicine unpalatable. Though injections pinch, the medicine enters the bloodstream immediately for immediate use by the body.. Non-fiction has its fans, but some people view it as an ill-tasting genre. If they need some information, they would rather watch a video than read “boring” non-fiction. This problem calls for preventative medicine. Here I will discuss four easy ways to give non-fiction a better taste. Of course, it would be boring if I just told you! I challenge you to use these facts about barn owls as clues! At the end, you can check to see if you decoded all four suggestions.
A Barn Owl Stands About 10-20 Inches High
If a friend said, “Hurry, look! There is a barn owl outside sitting on the fence.” I would run outside to get a look at the cute, feathery visitor. After I took a gander, I would go back inside. My life would continue. If my friend returned from the library with a book about owls, I would think it was curious. If my friend read the book from cover to cover, I would be impressed. If he checked out several more books on his next library visit, I would suspect an obsession. What do you learn about non-fiction writing from the height of the average screech owl?
“Owl eat anything” - Chiclet, the Hobby Owl
Pardon Chiclet’s pun, but an owl will eat virtually any creature small enough to catch and kill. Therefore, an owl’s diet varies according to its local ecosystem. In the grasslands, termites and crickets are on the buffet. In swampy areas, toads are not safe. By way of contrast, owls do not prey on animals to large or strong to subdue. Did you guess what Chiclet is trying to teach you?
“Barn Owls Recognize Their Siblings’ Calls”
This BBC Nature article explains how owlets use vocal calls to compete for food. Rather than resort to fisticuffs, the owls vocalize. The hungrier they are, the more they urgently they call. Their nestmates listen, and eventually “less hungry siblings ...withdraw from the contest.” When you think about the calls of baby owls, of which non-fiction writing strategy are you reminded?
A Baby is a Baby
Babies of numerous species share a need to sleep. Human babies sleep for some sixteen hours a day. Baby owls sleep a lot, experiencing REM sleep phases as do humans. Similarly, owlets and humans need less sleep as they grow older. Adult owls spend this extra time hunting, mating, and caring for young. What balance, similar to the one between sleep and essential activities, must a non-fiction writer establish?
The Answers
#1: Choose what facts you share. Owls have three eyelids. One could describe all there is to know about each one. However, when one considers the audience, one may decide to omit items that would be of low interest to the target reader. If you are as obsessed as my hypothetical owl-spotting friend, learn more about those eyelids here.
#2: Chiclet wants you to write about that you fully understand. You may misstate information, and confuse your reader, if the research material was too technical for your comprehension. I followed Chiclet’s advice, choosing to write about barn owls rather than reverse transcriptase PCR amplification of environmental RNA.
#3 Remember that writing is communication. In general, non-fiction is to inform. Write in such a way that your readers get the main point. Write at the reading level of the target audience.
#4 Balance is necessary. Sharing information or communicating a message will take a lot of your time as a writer. Yet, one should not neglect other essentials. Use online proofreading to make sure that your writing is free of grammar errors. Give attention to your title, your formatting, and your writing style.
Congratulations, you now know more than the average amount about barn owls. Hopefully, you also realize how to give your non-fiction writing a shot of personality. If so, your writers will find your writing as delectable as a screech owl finds a fresh, juicy rat.
By Nikolas Baron
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Bio:
Nikolas discovered his love for the written word in Elementary School, where he started spending his afternoons sprawled across the living room floor devouring one Marc Brown children’s novel after the other and writing short stories about daring pirate adventures. After acquiring some experience in various marketing, business development, and hiring roles at internet startups in a few different countries, he decided to re-unite his professional life with his childhood passions by joining Grammarly’s marketing team in San Francisco. He has the pleasure of being tasked with talking to writers, bloggers, teachers, and others about how they use Grammarly’s online proofreading application to improve their writing. His free time is spent biking, travelling, and reading
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Monday, June 11, 2007
WELCOME SANDY LENDER
1) Do you have a belief in certain spiritual things? (For instance, souls, nirvana, God, invisible pink unicorns, flying spaghetti monsters, or heaven.)
Love the flying spaghetti monster. Ohmigosh. When I found that, I sent the link to everyone I could think of…
But I definitely believe in God. I know that Jesus Christ is my personal savior and I am eternally grateful for that (otherwise, I'd be in a heap o' trouble).
2) Which of the following motivates you more to accomplish something? The prospect of fame or self-fulfillment.
Self-fulfillment is the big motivator. I don't want fame for myself: I want fame for Nigel and Chariss out of Choices Meant for Gods. I want to watch some talk show some day in the future and hear the host say, "Like Romeo and Juliet or Nigel and Chariss." Now, this will do one of two things to me: it will either make me burst into tears (very likely) or it'll send me into cardiac arrest. Cardiac arrest is probably best so I can die before I hear the audience say in crushing unison, "Who?"
3) Which of the following best describes you? And give us an example of how emotions or logic show up in your work.I am emotional and base my decisions and writing on feelings.
I am a thinker and I base my decisions and writing on logic and research.
Well, I'm a Gemini, so they both describe me to a "T". Seriously. In my day job, everything is based on the Vulcan way of thinking: what's logical? How can I back up this decision? But I'm very impatient (character flaw!) so I don't like to take a long time with research. I make gut-reaction decisions often, but they're gut-reaction decisions that are backed up with fast, find-this-and-figure-it-out-in-the-next-30-minutes kind of research, if that makes sense.
In my writing and personal life, decisions are made on an emotional basis, which is probably why my bank account weeps and I've been to 33+ Duran Duran concerts…
4) Tell me about a decision in your book that you made which was a bad one for your character. Did you keep the scene in the book or did you delete it?
I don't think any of the characters in Choices Meant for Gods make any bad decisions, really. They do things that are necessary and right, and I don’t fault any of them for the things they do. Now, the sequel is another story altogether…Toward the first third of Choices Made by Gods, the sequel to CMFG, Nigel Taiman makes a rash decision that will cost someone his or her life. It's very bad. I've left it in. It has to be there.
And Chariss and The Master Rothahn both make a horrible decision in the sequel as well. But, again, they have to. These are choices made by gods…
5) What strengths and weaknesses do you bring to writing?
I'm not sure if I'm going to answer this right, but I'll give it a shot here. A strength I have in writing is dialogue. I'm not going to pretend that I'm as good at it as Charlotte Bronte, but I learned from her. I've read her works and I wanted to emulate that style. A weakness I have in writing is probably using all those blasted adjectives. I over-describe stuff. Now, yeah, in epic fantasy, you have to describe things and explain just what the heck is going on—it's a world no one has seen before—but I have to edit myself A LOT before I turn stuff over to my publisher.
6) Describe a time when you had to sacrifice quality for a deadline, or vice versa. Would you try to extend a deadline to stay true to the quality of writing you aspire to?
In magazine publishing (my day job), you sacrifice for the deadline all the time, but I don't think we really sacrifice quality of writing. What usually suffers is the editing/proofreading. "Just send it," has come out of my mouth more than once when it's 11 p.m. and it's time to upload to the printer's ftp site. Extending deadlines is rarely an option in the professional world. Now, in book publishing, there are times you can morph the deadline schedule within the production schedule, but there's a drop-dead date for printing, and if you miss the window…ah…well…someone else's project goes on press in front of you because any time a press is quiet, that eerie sound of wind is the sound of the printing company's money going out the window…and they don't like that. So presses don't sit idle for long. If your project isn't ready to go on press when it's supposed to be there, they throw someone else's on and you get to wait for them to finish.
7) Tell me about a project you have been working on and how you organize your paperwork, chapters, writing goals, etc.
Right now the biggest project I've been working on is my online book tour. (I've already completed Book II of the Choices trilogy and I'm almost finished with Book III, so those are taking a back seat to promotion of Book I.) So I organized the tour down to every last anal-retentive detail.
When I'm working on a writing project, I don't typically outline chapters and I never set writing goals. The goal is to tell the story. Pow. My paperwork is sets and series of notebooks, notecards, sticky notes, and calendars with sticky notes on them so I can track where characters are and on what dates specific things happen. Now, for my vampire trilogy that I'm working on, things are more structured. I have what looks like an outline for the story-line and I have histories and descriptions written out in an orderly fashion for the characters (their character sketches), but this is a function of the muse, Caleb, who is a vampire, visiting and making those demands. He's quite meticulous and detail-oriented, which is fine. I think you have to be when your survival depends upon staying-alive-through-advanced-planning every time the sun rises—which is daily. It will drive me insane when I get started on the series in earnest.
8) Describe for me two improvements you have made in your writing in the past six months. Greater word count. More emotions. Better able to describe a character. Etc. What have you improved?
I think lesser word count would make my publisher happy…he'll be delighted when I send him Choices Made by Gods because it's only 120,000 words (currently…I'm not done editing stuff in), which is 150,000 less than CMFG started out with.
I think I've improved on punching up my action scenes. I don't know, really. They've always had the combo of short and long sentences to make flow "go," but I think I've given them more "hit." And that's important for Books II and III.
9) What aspect of your past books did you enjoy the most?
Chariss's sense of humor. I love it when she teases someone because it usually takes them a minute to realize she's just "got" them…
10) Now that we know you better, how can we buy your book Choices Meant for Gods?
My publisher's site gives a 25% discount, but you have to pay shipping. So Amazon has an option to get free shipping at http://www.amazon.com/Choices-Meant-Gods-Sandy-Lender/dp/1595071652/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-9089752-5140754?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180941096&sr=1-1.
Thank you for hosting me at your site today, Charlene! Your note to me said these questions were "off-the-wall," but I thought they were refreshingly off-the-beaten-path. This was a fun interview. I'll check in later on to see what questions or comments I can answer from your visitors.
Love the flying spaghetti monster. Ohmigosh. When I found that, I sent the link to everyone I could think of…
But I definitely believe in God. I know that Jesus Christ is my personal savior and I am eternally grateful for that (otherwise, I'd be in a heap o' trouble).
2) Which of the following motivates you more to accomplish something? The prospect of fame or self-fulfillment.
Self-fulfillment is the big motivator. I don't want fame for myself: I want fame for Nigel and Chariss out of Choices Meant for Gods. I want to watch some talk show some day in the future and hear the host say, "Like Romeo and Juliet or Nigel and Chariss." Now, this will do one of two things to me: it will either make me burst into tears (very likely) or it'll send me into cardiac arrest. Cardiac arrest is probably best so I can die before I hear the audience say in crushing unison, "Who?"
3) Which of the following best describes you? And give us an example of how emotions or logic show up in your work.I am emotional and base my decisions and writing on feelings.
I am a thinker and I base my decisions and writing on logic and research.
Well, I'm a Gemini, so they both describe me to a "T". Seriously. In my day job, everything is based on the Vulcan way of thinking: what's logical? How can I back up this decision? But I'm very impatient (character flaw!) so I don't like to take a long time with research. I make gut-reaction decisions often, but they're gut-reaction decisions that are backed up with fast, find-this-and-figure-it-out-in-the-next-30-minutes kind of research, if that makes sense.
In my writing and personal life, decisions are made on an emotional basis, which is probably why my bank account weeps and I've been to 33+ Duran Duran concerts…
4) Tell me about a decision in your book that you made which was a bad one for your character. Did you keep the scene in the book or did you delete it?
I don't think any of the characters in Choices Meant for Gods make any bad decisions, really. They do things that are necessary and right, and I don’t fault any of them for the things they do. Now, the sequel is another story altogether…Toward the first third of Choices Made by Gods, the sequel to CMFG, Nigel Taiman makes a rash decision that will cost someone his or her life. It's very bad. I've left it in. It has to be there.
And Chariss and The Master Rothahn both make a horrible decision in the sequel as well. But, again, they have to. These are choices made by gods…
5) What strengths and weaknesses do you bring to writing?
I'm not sure if I'm going to answer this right, but I'll give it a shot here. A strength I have in writing is dialogue. I'm not going to pretend that I'm as good at it as Charlotte Bronte, but I learned from her. I've read her works and I wanted to emulate that style. A weakness I have in writing is probably using all those blasted adjectives. I over-describe stuff. Now, yeah, in epic fantasy, you have to describe things and explain just what the heck is going on—it's a world no one has seen before—but I have to edit myself A LOT before I turn stuff over to my publisher.
6) Describe a time when you had to sacrifice quality for a deadline, or vice versa. Would you try to extend a deadline to stay true to the quality of writing you aspire to?
In magazine publishing (my day job), you sacrifice for the deadline all the time, but I don't think we really sacrifice quality of writing. What usually suffers is the editing/proofreading. "Just send it," has come out of my mouth more than once when it's 11 p.m. and it's time to upload to the printer's ftp site. Extending deadlines is rarely an option in the professional world. Now, in book publishing, there are times you can morph the deadline schedule within the production schedule, but there's a drop-dead date for printing, and if you miss the window…ah…well…someone else's project goes on press in front of you because any time a press is quiet, that eerie sound of wind is the sound of the printing company's money going out the window…and they don't like that. So presses don't sit idle for long. If your project isn't ready to go on press when it's supposed to be there, they throw someone else's on and you get to wait for them to finish.
7) Tell me about a project you have been working on and how you organize your paperwork, chapters, writing goals, etc.
Right now the biggest project I've been working on is my online book tour. (I've already completed Book II of the Choices trilogy and I'm almost finished with Book III, so those are taking a back seat to promotion of Book I.) So I organized the tour down to every last anal-retentive detail.
When I'm working on a writing project, I don't typically outline chapters and I never set writing goals. The goal is to tell the story. Pow. My paperwork is sets and series of notebooks, notecards, sticky notes, and calendars with sticky notes on them so I can track where characters are and on what dates specific things happen. Now, for my vampire trilogy that I'm working on, things are more structured. I have what looks like an outline for the story-line and I have histories and descriptions written out in an orderly fashion for the characters (their character sketches), but this is a function of the muse, Caleb, who is a vampire, visiting and making those demands. He's quite meticulous and detail-oriented, which is fine. I think you have to be when your survival depends upon staying-alive-through-advanced-planning every time the sun rises—which is daily. It will drive me insane when I get started on the series in earnest.
8) Describe for me two improvements you have made in your writing in the past six months. Greater word count. More emotions. Better able to describe a character. Etc. What have you improved?
I think lesser word count would make my publisher happy…he'll be delighted when I send him Choices Made by Gods because it's only 120,000 words (currently…I'm not done editing stuff in), which is 150,000 less than CMFG started out with.
I think I've improved on punching up my action scenes. I don't know, really. They've always had the combo of short and long sentences to make flow "go," but I think I've given them more "hit." And that's important for Books II and III.
9) What aspect of your past books did you enjoy the most?
Chariss's sense of humor. I love it when she teases someone because it usually takes them a minute to realize she's just "got" them…
10) Now that we know you better, how can we buy your book Choices Meant for Gods?
My publisher's site gives a 25% discount, but you have to pay shipping. So Amazon has an option to get free shipping at http://www.amazon.com/Choices-Meant-Gods-Sandy-Lender/dp/1595071652/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-9089752-5140754?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180941096&sr=1-1.
Thank you for hosting me at your site today, Charlene! Your note to me said these questions were "off-the-wall," but I thought they were refreshingly off-the-beaten-path. This was a fun interview. I'll check in later on to see what questions or comments I can answer from your visitors.
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