Simultaneously, Craig Gailbraith from Drawbridge Productions in Cape Town, is making a film about Yookie’s incredible journey. I’m sure it will be a box office hit!

If you would like to develop your own skills in writing life stories as well as other non-fiction writing, why not work through the Crafty Writer’s free non-fiction course

Related posts:

1. Short Story Film Festival: ‘Enemy Lines’ in New York

The Angel Animals Network 2010 True Story Contest is now accepting submissions of true stories of animals helping children, parents, and families deal with difficult situations and circumstances. Animals featured can be dogs, cats, horses, gerbils, rabbits, ferrets, or any house pet or animal in nature. They can be family pets or therapy, assistance, or service animals.

The stories can be written by parents or guardians of children or by the children or teens themselves. Stories can also be written by adults who recall a special animal from childhood or teen years who helped them through a tough period.

This contest hopes to find real-life stories that demonstrate animals comforting and helping to heal children during everyday ups and downs or traumatic events such as divorce or other losses. The stories can depict how children and teens de-stress with animals while learning valuable life lessons.  The deadline is 15 September 2010. For more details visit Angel Animals.

Related posts:

1. Talking Animal Stories – Wind in the Willows MK II?
2. True Life Stories – market opportunity
3. Writing Fantasy Fiction

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1. American Writing Markets
2. Travel writing: in-flight magazines
3. Freelance writing for the internet

The course is suitable for anyone who has completed the first level course or who has had some non-fiction published already. If you have done neither, then why not check out my free non-fiction course here on The Crafty Writer.

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2. Copywriting: write to sell
3. Write Screenplays That Sell

Whose story is it?

The most marketable and interesting form of written history, is history about people. Your research will have unearthed many potential ‘characters’. Which ones are you going to feature in your story? Articles are best written when focusing on a single ‘protagonist’ or a small group. In a book you can deal with more characters, but they need to be linked. There are a number of questions that you can ask that are used by fiction writers to develop a character. By adopting this approach you will help to bring your personalities to life and to present them in a lively, readable historical narrative.

Who is your protagonist?

This may be an individual, a family, a group, a community, a class or a nation. It could also be an institution and the people associated with it. One of my students has written the narrative history of his local bowling club and hopes to get it published as a booklet. In his ’story’ the bowling club itself is the main character and the people who drift in and out of it the supporting cast. Rian Malan’s family history My Traitor’s Heart, which is a lens on South African white guilt, has his whole family (and by association, all white South Africans) as the protagonist. If a Pirate I Must Be by Richard Sanders, has the infamous pirate of the Caribbean, Bartholomew Roberts as his protagonist.

What is their goal?

Rian Malan, as the central character in his own book, wants to come to terms with his family’s racist past and find a place in the ‘new’ South Africa. Bartholomew Roberts wants fame and fortune and to avoid getting caught. These are goals that drive our historical characters in their real lives but also give their stories forward momentum on the page. If I were to write the life story of my grandma Betty Veitch, her central goal would be to shake off her parents’ working class mantle and find respect as an independent business woman.  What is your central character (or protagonist’s) goal?

How do they achieve it?

What steps did they take to achieve their goal? Remember, a main character who takes destiny in their own hands is far more compelling than one who is simply swept along by historical fate. Even if they are swept along, how did they attempt to navigate their way? Even if they never achieve their goal, their attempts to do so will drive your historical narrative forward.

What or who stands in their way?

In fiction this would be the ‘antagonist’. This does not have to be a person. Circumstances, in and out of your main character’s control, may block their efforts to achieve their goal. In writing my family history, my grandma’s marriage to my grandfather, a man beset with illness who died in his 40s, became an inadverdent ‘obstacle’ to her goal. How did she deal with it?

How are they affected by historical events?

On the broader stage of history and society, what events impacted, positively or negatively on your main character and the pursuit of their goal? Again, with my grandmother, the Second World War affected her pursuit of a business career.

How do they change historical events (if at all)?

My grandmother did not change or have an impact on historical events, but your main character (person, community, institution etc) might have. If so, how?

What is their legacy?

How was the world changed by your character living in it? The world may be as small as your family or as big as the earth. The fact that you are writing about this person suggests that a legacy has been left. What is it?

• A fond memory?
• An inspiration?
• A change in circumstance?
• A change in perspective?
• A change in legislation?
• Or simply a regret?

Join us next time for tips on using timelines to structure your historical narrative.

Related posts:

1. Writing history for the commercial market – 1: finding the social context
2. Tolkien history resource
3. Writing historical fiction – reviews and links

Public vs private history

Whether it’s your own family history or simply an aspect of history you find interesting, you need to ask yourself whether this is something that should be kept private or be written for public consumption. This will have implications for both the writing style (we’ll look at that in a future session) and subject matter.

Finding the social context

Just because something interests you, it doesn’t mean it will interest anyone else. This is particularly true of your family history.  So what makes history relevant or of interest to the broader reading public? A social context. For example: How does the life story of Granny McAdam provide an insight into the social history of her time?
Or how do the changes in fortune of the Marmaduke family from blue-blooded artistocracy to blue-collar workers reflect changes in class mobility?

The Lens Concept

This is what I refer to as the ‘lens concept’. A lens is something that helps focus the eye on something else. When considering the story of the history you want to write, ask yourself: what lens am I going to use?

• Female emancipation?
•  The decline of a community?
• The rise of an industry?
•  The suffering of the oppressed?
•  The changing political landscape?

This will help you to establish the theme of your story as well as to select the information you are going to use from your vast research. It will help you to leave out irrelevent information and structure your article / book. It will also give your publisher a marketing angle. Remember, a body of research can be looked at through multiple lenses, which can give rise to a number of differently angled articles or books. It is a common mistake of  novice history writers, particularly family history writers, to try to include too broad a sweep of their subject in one article. The lens concept helps to narrow it down and allow you to present a ‘slice’ of history.

Keeping it in the family

If you cannot find or are not interested in providing a social context for your ‘story’ then it should remain private or be written for family members. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, just make sure that if you do write something for your family to be careful how you handle skeletons in the cupboard, lest you cause a family rift.

A good book to help you get started is Writing your Family History by Deborah Cass.

In the next session we will look at finding the ’story’ in your history and using narrative techniques.

Related posts:

1. Writing history for the commercial market – 2: narrative history writing techniques
2. Report writing – finding work
3. Writing historical fiction 2 – doing the research

For those of you who can’t make it, why not check out Rod’s guest posts right here on The Crafty Writer – Beginner Blogging for Writers 1, 2 & 3

Oh, he told me to tell you, he taught me everything I know. Mmm, well, not everything, Rod.

Related posts:

1. Beginner Blogging for Writers: part 3
2. Beginner Blogging for Writers: part 1
3. Beginner Blogging for Writers: part 2

So what are you waiting for? Get writing! If you need some tips on writing from life, check out this session in our free non-fiction writing course.

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1. True animal stories contest
2. Non-fiction market opportunities
3. Talking Animal Stories – Wind in the Willows MK II?

• author
• genre and content
• research, sources and credibility
• structure
• writing style
• marketing

Author

Bill Bryson is, to date, the author of 18 published books. He started his writing career as a journalist for the Times and the Independent but is best known for his travel writing – including Notes from a Small Island and Notes from a Big Country about his experiences in Britain and the US, respectively. Although American by birth, he now (again) lives in the UK and is a renowned anglophile. He has also written about Europe, Africa and Australia. His witty travelogues have made him a household name. Less well known are his books on language and linguistics, such as Mother Tongue: the English Language. In recent years he has achieved critical acclaim for his A Short History of Nearly Everything (2005), which won the Aventis Prize for the best general science book and a Descartes Award for communication in science. Shakespeare: the World as a Stage (2007) is his latest offering.

In 2005 he became Chancellor of Durham University, succeeding the inimitable Sir Peter Ustinov. Ten years ago, one of Shakespeare’s First Folios was stolen from Durham University in a not-so-daring heist along with other valuable manuscripts including original fragments of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. In July 2007 a man walked into the Folger Library in Washington DC and asked them to authenticate a book he claimed to have bought in Cuba. It turned out to be the original Durham Folio. The FBI was contacted, then the Durham Constabulary, who tracked the man down to – of all places – Washington, Durham, UK. Bryson is said to be delighted at the imminent return of the Folio to the university (who have promised to beef up security), but I bet he would have been even more delighted if it had turned up two years ago, so he could have included a whole chapter of it in his book.

For discussion:
How do you think Bryson’s background as a journalist and travel writer helped him in writing this book?

Genre and content

At the risk of being too obvious, this is a non-fiction historical biography. It is a general introduction aimed at a populist rather than academic readership. So any suggestions that it is not furthering academia nor adds little to the scholarly canon on Shakespeare are misplaced – it is not meant to. Like any good historical biography, Bryson is concerned not simply with telling the story of an individual, but rather telling that story within a historical context. A Shakespeare born 200 years earlier or later would not have been the same Shakespeare; he is a product of and a contributor to his times. Which is just as well for Bryson who limits himself in journalistic fashion to only reporting the known facts, and, in his own words, there are so few known facts about Shakespeare that the result is a very slender volume.

This book was written not so much because the world needs another book on Shakespeare, as because this series does. The idea is a simple one: to see how much of Shakespeare we can know, really know, from the record. (Bryson, pp20-21)

Without the extra ‘padding’ of the historical background, there wouldn’t have been much of a book at all. Recreating the world in which Shakespeare lived is Bryson’s real gift – and he does it admirably, in good travel writing style. It is also a history of Shakespearean scholarship, and, I would argue, the latter chapters on the imposter theory and the First Folios are among his best.

For Discussion:
Suggest alternative ways Bryson could have fleshed out the actual biographical content of the book.

Research, sources and credibility

As I’ve already mentioned, this is a populist introduction to Shakespeare rather than an academic treatise. As such, the annotation of sources is not so rigorously observed – there is only a select bibliography given at the end of the book (albeit a respectable canon of 30 or so volumes), with no specific page references. But as I note in my non-fiction course, this is perfectly normal in populist non-fiction writing. And although every single fact is not footnoted and cross-referenced, the writer still needs a sense that the author has done his research and that they are not being fed a bucket of hogwash.

Bryson’s use of sources is journalistic – he piggy-backs on others’ expertise, acting as an interpreter between the academic specialists and the non-academic reader. As a non-fiction writer you don’t necessarily have to be a specialist in a field, just to have the ability to communicate information from one camp to another. However, Bryson does more than merely transpose knowledge, but more of that under structure and style.

Bryson quotes experts in direct speech, giving credence to his version of events. This is a classic journalistic technique. Experts or witnesses are interviewed, but only a fraction of what they say is actually quoted at the point where the writer needs to back up or further illustrate their interpretation of the ’story’. He also liberally scatters references (although not annotated) to previous works throughout the text, giving the reader the impression that he has done his research. But unless we are experts in Shakespeare ourselves, we cannot know whether or not he is reporting them accurately. That is the pact that is set up between a non-fiction writer and reader. In fiction we have the notion of the ‘unreliable narrator’ or the suspicion of an unreliable narrator (see for example next month’s Book Club The Reluctant Fundamentalist) which can add a delicious twist to a novel, but in non-fiction there is no room for this concept.

For discussion:
Do you think Bryson manages to communicate credibility? If so, how does he do it?

Structure

In non-fiction writing one normally has a concept for an article or book and then does some preliminary research to see whether there is enough information to fill the pages. At this point one would then begin to get an idea of structure. The structure of a book or article is what makes one piece of writing on a subject different from another. How is the research going to be communicated? One may already have a thesis and the research will back it up, or, alternatively, another thesis will suggest itself from the research and the original one will be adapted (or even abandoned) and the information structured accordingly.

For discussion:
What is Bryson’s thesis in this book? Do you think he had it before conducting his research or did it emerge from it?

In every body of research there are potentially dozens of books or articles that could be written; your structure will determine what you will include and what you will leave out in order to support or illustrate your thesis.

In Bryson’s Shakespeare, his thesis is that there is not much factual information on Shakespeare, but he will guide us through what there is, separating fact from fiction – this is stated up front in the first chapter ‘In Search of William Shakespeare’. On the way he will introduce us to the world in which Shakespeare lived (chapters 2, 3, 4, 6 & 7) and the literary and academic world that emerged after his death (chapters 8 & 9). Chapter 5, in which evidence for the plays themselves are discussed, is a fulcrum for the whole book. However, I think this is his weakest chapter, as the structure is too loose. One almost has the sense of bullet points rather than a flowing narrative. Overall, Bryson uses a chronological structure with a subject grouping running parallel to the timeline.

For discussion:
‘Chapter five: the plays’ could have been placed elsewhere in the table of contents. Alternatively, the information within it could have been scattered through the other chapters. Why do you think Bryson chose this particular structure? Can you suggest a different structure for the available material? Would you have done it differently?

Style

We’ve already discussed Bryson’s journalistic style, but we haven’t touched on his gift as a travel writer. In this book I see Bryson approaching his subject in the same way he approaches a culture or country in his travelogues. He takes us, the reader, on a journey through a little-known or unknown world. Collectively we are on a tour bus, which at times speeds through the boring areas and stops at those of greater interest. Bryson is a quirky guide (which is the charm of his travelogues) and he highlights the awe-inspiring and the ridiculous, the grand and the petty, in equal measure. Bryson believes that the minutae of life are sometimes of more interest than the sweeping politics of the day; I couldn’t agree more.

In my non-fiction course, I mention how contemporary non-fiction style is far less formal than it was in the past. Gone is the author referring to him or herself as ‘the author’. Bryson himself is ever present – just like a friendly tour guide. And although the facts and only the facts are reported in good journalistic style, he is not averse to commenting on them. In my opinion, that’s what makes this book the gem that it is. His wry asides and witty observations at times made me laugh out loud and turned what could have been simply an informative introduction to the life and times of Shakespeare and a turgid overview of Shakespearean scholarship, into one of the most entertaining books of the year.

For discussion:
In your opinion, what other elements of non-fiction writing style may help to endear this text to the reader?

Marketing

Bryson has become a brand. This was illustrated superbly in 2002 when Penguin re-released their ‘Penguin Dictionary of Troublesome Words’ (first written by Bryson in 1983) and renamed it Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words. Bryson has become synonymous with good writing, good entertainment and a good read. I doubt someone else without Shakespearean credentials could have got away with writing this book. Good branding equals credibility. We trust Bryson. Whether we should or not, is another matter.

For discussion:
Bryson took a risk in moving from his successful travel niche into the general non-fiction market. His first two books seem to show that it’s paid off. Do you think readers will now ‘trust’ Bryson enough with any topic?

Now it’s your turn. Please join in the discussion by leaving your comments below, and don’t forget to vote in our poll:
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Our next Book Club tile is The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid. If you haven’t got a copy of the book yet you can buy it through the The Crafty Writer Bookshop and help keep the Club and all the information on this website free.

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For some excellent tips on creating the perfect intro visit Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen’s article on Writing Great Leads in which she encourages you to shock, challenge or provoke your readers into reading on. Laurie, along with yours truly,  is one of the regular contributors to the Write On blog carnival.

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