True confession: I read more fiction than nonfiction. It’s not because I want to live in a fantasy world (well, mostly not …). It’s because I love storytelling. Intricate, breathtaking plots! Exotic faraway places! Fascinating, colorful people! And words — oh, the flow of the language on the page, that draws me into different realities. Sigh.
BUT — did you know that many nonfiction titles have these same qualities?
Let me introduce you to the world of narrative nonfiction. Also called creative nonfiction, narrative nonfiction describes a true story about real people and events that reads like a novel. What a mind-blowing idea! While it does appear across all subject areas, narrative nonfiction lends itself more easily to some subjects than to others.
Biographies, for example, as well as autobiographies and personal essays, are told from the point of view of the author/narrator and are about real events and people. Travel and history often have linear timelines and can be related in a storylike format.
Well-written narrative nonfiction also transfers well to movies — books that have recently been made into movies include “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the F.B.I.” from David Grann’s book (2017), and “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” (from the 2015 book “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: How Churchill’s Secret Warriors Set Europe Ablaze and Gave Birth to Modern Black Ops” by Damien Lewis).
