The Joys of Non-Fiction

Much as I love reading a wide range of fiction, I must admit it has been my tastes in non-fiction that have expanded in recent years.

I am reading more history now than before and loving it. Ironically perhaps, reading more straight history, so to speak, has made me appreciate historical fiction more.

I think it makes it easier to see or guess at the depth of research a historical fiction author has to do to be able to set the scenes of their "world" properly and to carry their readers with them. Get one historical detail wrong and that whole world could crash.

This is the big advantage of fiction, of course. You can and do totally make it up! But set a story in a known historical setting or with known historical people, then the details must be authentic.

I like the fact that non-fiction has been, in recent years, using more of the techniques in fiction to catch readers' imaginations. Non-fiction should never be a deadly dull list of dates and facts.

Good non-fiction opens up the world it is written about and makes it real to the reader. This is very similar to a fiction writer portraying characters the ready can really identify with. Catching the imagination is vital whatever genre you write in then.