Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers' Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University Paperback – 30 Jan. 2007

This book distils nuggets of wisdom from 51 leading authors into 91 chapters of advice and tips. If you are not content to take the experience of said authors as authority enough, there is bibliography at the back to delve further into specific areas. The book is thorough and covers every possible topic (and more besides) and question a writer of non fiction today might want addressed. This ranges from the practical, more business-like aspects of writing, such as time management, making it as a freelancer, and working with editors to aspects of craft like structuring stories and developing characters. There’s even a section on the ethical issues one might encounter as a writer.The book’s structure is superb, and it really allows you to pick and chose based on what you need and want. What sections, chapters and tips you find most useful will really depend on the individual and the contributors are really given room to shine and highlight the truly diverse ways of writing there are.All in all, I recommend this book to all those interested in, engaging in or aspiring to get writing. If you want to work in journalism then this book is invaluable, though it will be of use to anyone who finds themselves putting pen to paper (or hands to keyboard). If nothing else, this book will have you looking at writing with a fresh perspective. This book deserves to be on the bookshelves of all writers of nonfiction.If you found this review useful please let me know by hitting the “helpful” button below :)

Really great read for those interested in the process behind really good journalism and narrative non-fiction. So many tips and hints from some great journalists and storytellers sharing their experiences. THe kind of book you can dip into or read from cover to cover (though if you do the latter it may need a re-read or two, as there's lots of gems to take in).

Archilochus tells us that "[t]he fox knows many things; the hedgehog knows one big thing." Conventional wisdom is that the hedgehog's big-vision approach always wins the day. But this book convinces us that the narrative journalist is a different animal. These writers are foxes, crafting their success from little tips, tricks and bits of wisdom gathered along the way. Such morsels need to be shared in the same snippety fashion, not force-fitted into some grand unified theory of good writing. This book gets it right.Mark Kramer and Wendy Call have assembled 91 chapters of advice about writing from 51 working authors and editors. This advice is backed up by the contributors' hard-won experience and by a generous bibliography of books and web sites that contain exemplary writings and yet more writing advice. It is presented in the easily-digestible form of brief chapters that focus on one or two aspects of reporting and writing. Kramer and Call briefly introduce each of the book's nine sections then stand aside so we can hear the contributors' voices. Readers will differ in what helps them the most--there is much to choose from.Five contributions that I found particularly valuable:Mark Kramer speaks as a writer in "Reporting for Narrative: Ten Tips." He describes how to balance background research between the extremes of too little and too much.Isabel Wilkerson's "Interviewing: Accelerated Intimacy" teaches how to establish rapport with sources and hear their stories--while maintaining enough distance to report them.Roy Peter Clark's "Ladder of Abstraction" shows how to describe concrete details of people's lives, connect them to larger themes, and avoid the deadly region of "middle abstraction" that alienates readers.Jack Hart's "Narrative Distance" illustrates how to psychologically "place" the viewpoint of a story's narrator--and shift this perspective to guide the reader through a story.Susan Orlean's "On Voice" describes the self-analysis and authenticity necessary to each writer's unique verbal style. Its development cannot be rushed--or faked.I strongly recommend this book to anyone who writes to an audience and wants to do it better. It is dead-on-target for you if you work in narrative journalism. If you do not, there are still lessons to improve your writing. Kramer and Call remind us that "[w]riting well is difficult, even excruciating, and demands courage, patience, humility, erudition, savvy, stubbornness, wisdom, and aesthetic sense--all summoned at your lonely desk." I like writing at my lonely desk--and I like having this book so I don't have to learn everything the hard way.

I dip in and out of this

This is a handy book for non-fiction writers, and also readers generally.Its potential scope and application is far broader than journalism - it is filled with pointers and advice for people starting out in non-fiction writing, from freelance work through to memoirs and history, showing how to get a different angle on presenting the subject. Post-graduate students will find some of the suggestions very useful.There is also a long section dealing with the ethical dimensions of non-fiction writing, raising issues that authors to need consider.But even if you are not in the profession of writing, it is a useful primer to understand the approaches journalists take, how they structure or style their material, means they use to hook you in and implicitly push a viewpoint.Then again some pieces are simply a stimulating and informative read: including Jack Hart on the history of narrative reporting, Anne Hull on working in the field, Malcolm Gladwell on profiles, Alma Guillermoprieto on Truth versus Story, Jill Lepore on flaws in writing history, Tom Wolfe on the emotional core of good journalism.These pieces, and many more, lead me to look at journalism with a more discerning eye.