How to Write Non-Fiction: Does non-fiction or memoir have to be true?
Authors often wrestle with the concept of truth when writing non-fiction, and how you define ‘truth’ will depend on the type of book you’re writing.
Consider these different scenarios.
• You’re writing a biography and need to be exact about the place and year of the subject’s birth
• You’re writing a book on depression and want to reference specific medical studies about the efficacy of treatment to back up your personal experience
• You’re writing a memoir and you’re trying to remember which particular episode came first in your personal history
• You’re writing self-help and you want to use a personal anecdote, but your memory is a little fuzzy on the details
• You want to quote someone but can’t remember the exact words they said
Use references and citations if possible
If you can verify with reputable sources, then do so as much as possible. Check dates, quotes, studies, scientific papers, and publications. Keep detailed references as you make notes during your research, and then if you come across something while writing or editing that is not referenced, or in quotation marks, check the provenance again.
The appendix of The Healthy Writer lists the scientific studies in peer-reviewed medical journals that back up the individual chapters about physical and mental health.
In this book, I’ve included citations for quotes and references in each chapter and in the appendix. Even with my fiction, I include an author’s note listing books and research material so readers know where my ideas came from.
However, this is not a book about academic writing or investigative journalism, and your personal experience doesn’t need citations to be valid.
There’s a balance, and only you can decide how much you need to include in your book.
If you’ve used AI tools as part of the process, double check everything with other verifiable sources, since the models can hallucinate and make things up.
If you’re paralysed by the need to make sure every single thing is double and triple checked, perfectionism may kill your book before it ever reaches the world. So be careful not to spend years in research checking every little thing, or maybe consider hiring someone to help you. Many copyeditors will include basic fact-checking as part of their service, but you can also hire specialist fact-checkers or research assistants.
Provide the right information for the level of your book and care enough about your audience that you do your best to make sure everything is correct.
Truth (with a capital T) versus truth (with a small t)
“You’re seeking the truth of memory — your memory and character — not of unbiased history.”
—Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir
The concept of truth is fuzzier when it comes to personal memory, and you need to decide how far you want to go to find it when writing memoir or sharing personal anecdotes. Everyone remembers things differently, and your truth may not be the same as someone else’s.
For example, I’m happily married for the second time now, but my first marriage ended in divorce. My truth about that time is dramatically different from the experience of my first husband, and both sides are ‘true’ in their own way.
Memoir is not autobiography with a blow-by-blow account of all the details, nor is it an exacting forensic report.
It is a story, albeit a true one.
Lying or making things up entirely is clearly not acceptable, but a writer may use narrative techniques from fiction.
They may turn several minor characters into one person. They may write things out of order. They may write a conversation as they remember it, but memory is, of course, flawed and a dramatised conversation will not be exactly what happened. As Rachael Herron, author of Fast Draft Your Memoir, says, “the truth in the memory is changed every time you pull it out.”
Travel writer Alastair Humphreys expanded on this theme further on The Creative Penn Podcast, noting,
I never make up stories of stuff that didn’t happen, but I often amalgamate a lot of different truths. Lots of different memories of, say, campsites or perhaps different individual people I’ve met, I often amalgamate all of these things into one nugget of a story which serves to tell, more accurately, how the experience was at the time — and in a way, to make it more truthful. Not to make it more factual, but to make it more truthful.
Even if the specific details are fuzzy, you can still aim for emotional truth in your book. My memoir Pilgrimage is emotionally true in every way, and it’s also factually correct as much as possible.
This striving for truth also resulted in my decision on the final Pilgrimage cover design. My designer Jane made different options that reflected popular covers in the solo walking and travel memoir niche, and I shared them in a poll with my audience.
The overwhelming winner was a cover with sun and sea and primary colours that had a ‘happy happy, joy joy’ vibe. But that was not the emotional truth of my pilgrimages or the resulting book.
I decided against the popular choice and went with one of my photos taken on the St Cuthbert’s Way with a stormy sky and a mountain to climb ahead. It fitted the Truth (capital T) and the truth (small t) of the book, and as one of my own photos, it is authentic in every way.
You can see the process with the cover options at www.TheCreativePenn.com/pilgrimage-cover
Questions:
• What are the important things that need to be true in your book and what might you adapt for the sake of story and impact?
• How will you ensure factual truth where important without getting caught in the trap of perfectionism?
Resources:
• The Art of Memoir — Mary Karr
• How to Fast Draft Your Memoir with Rachael Herron, The Creative Penn Podcast — www.TheCreativePenn.com/fastdraft
• Writing and Marketing Travel Memoir with Alastair Humphreys — www.TheCreativePenn.com/alastair19
• Why I Ignored Target Reader Feedback For My Pilgrimage Book Cover — www.TheCreativePenn.com/pilgrimage-cover
