ACWC Writers Blog

By Lucinda Secrest McDowell

Just because you write non-fiction doesn’t mean you can’t be a good storyteller.

In fact, I heartily advocate using all the elements of fiction in your writing. This is often called “narrative non-fiction” and employs good storytelling in order to offer an important takeaway.

While strong characterization, dialogue, and context are important, the key is in the details. Details are what help a writer to heed the advice of “Show, don’t tell.”

What does this mean to a writer?

“It means to learning how to use descriptive details to give your story a sense of time and place and an emotional tone that will help readers feel what is going on the story as you relate it,” says writing expert Biff Barnes.

The key is to be specific.

For instance, compare these two sentences:

1. I walked to my truck that morning and drove to work.

2. The sun had barely made an appearance and it was in that in-between time of faint light peeking through the darkness that I wearily shuffled out to my beat-up red pickup truck, wondering yet again if those worn tires would get me to work before the shift bell rang.

Both sentences get me to my truck and off to work.

But which one tells you more of the story? Obviously, #2 with many more details:

• It’s barely morning – crack o’dawn.
• I’m tired and not all that eager to go.
• My vehicle is an old truck with worn tires.
• I do shift work and can’t afford to be late.

We communicate more clearly when we use the right words – not just “I walked to my truck,” but “I wearily shuffled.”  Descriptive words. That’s why developing a wide vocabulary is important!

Don’t just tell about the beautiful evening by the shore. Help your readers experience it the way you did – involve their senses. Is it warm? Is there a breeze? Can you hear waves lapping on the shore? What music comes from the nearby restaurant? And why do the smells make you suddenly hungry for fish and chips?

But in order to provide details in your non-fiction story you must be a person who chooses to notice.

To be attentive to life. To slow down long enough to observe the details of what and who surround you. And then to filter those details through your own mind so that you can portray them realistically, empathetically or critically to others, depending on what you are communicating.

This week a friend of mine died of cancer. Now, if I were writing about some of the spiritual and practical lessons I learned while walking with her through this process, I might utilize the narrative non-fiction format of storytelling. I would present dialogue, scenery, and characterization, to help make you feel that you are there with me in the hospital as I visit her. So that you totally understand my frustration when I say or do the wrong thing; my despair at not being able to comfort her grieving family. And by my giving details, you the reader will take away some of the very lessons I learned in this real life experience. But perhaps you will learn it better through story than through a bulleted how-to article.

But there’s no way I can be the kind of writer who offers this to my reader unless I am the kind of person who assimilates life through noticing. Taking time to filter and process. That’s why good writers are deliberate and focus on others. That’s why we choose to relish the moments and to listen and to look deeper.

I cannot be a writer of details if I am always on the run.

Our readers don’t want us to tell them how to feel something or even what to feel. They want us to help them experience the situation so vividly that the lesson or emotion is naturally awakened within them.

Author Cec Murphey says that we “show” (not tell) when we present a picture to our readers.  “Good writing draws a picture for us and pulls us into the scene. Good writing is subtle. I can insert one simple detail and it conveys more than a paragraph of telling statements.”

Learn how to develop details in your writing. Take a walk and be especially attentive to all around you. Jot down what every sense experienced. Watch people and practice describing them with precision, not just what they’re wearing, but their demeanor or attitude.  

You will not only become a better storyteller, but perhaps a kinder person as well.

“Our life story is multilayered and filled with wonder;

our task is to stop our activity long enough to notice the details.”

– Vinita Hampton Wright

Your Asheville Christian Writes Conference assignment: 

1. Determine that you will be a person who notices. Pay attention! To life, to people, to your surroundings.
2. Write of a recent experience in which you learned something new. I don’t want to hear about what you learned, I want to actually experience it with you.
3. Draw me into the scene from the very first words with vivid descriptions of sights, smells, sounds… Help me be there with you – setting the scene not only of where you are physically, but also what you are feeling and thinking at this time – where you are emotionally and spiritually as you begin to receive something new and unexpected.
4. Show me the breakthrough or lesson or “new thing” as though you were writing a story. Don’t preach, but help me understand why the lightbulb went on in your mind and heart.
5. Finally, take one step further and reveal an intersect between what you learned and what God says in the Bible. (this is what might make your lesson appropriate to use in a potential blog, devotional or presentation.)