The crown of my life

I yap on a lot about novels in these emails: I’ve written plenty of novels; I like writing them; the vast majority of you guys are writing them too.

But I’ve also written non-fiction: Five books under my own name, but I’ve been quite involved in ghost-writing or similar with several others.

So: I like non-fiction too. And, within that, I like creative non-fiction: writing narratives that are essentially true, but using broadly the same set of literary techniques that a novelist brings into play.

I’m bringing this up now, because we have a new course available: a 6-part a 6-part video course on an Introduction to Creative Non-Fiction. The course is led by Sam Jordison, a writer himself, but also the founder of the quite brilliant Galley Beggar Press. The course is free to our lovely Premium Members, naturally, but you can buy it for £99 if you really want to. (But why would you want to? You can get everything in Premium Membership for £150.) More info here if you want it.

Of the memoirs I’ve worked with most closely, two come to mind.

The first is West End Girls – a memoir by Barbara Tate. She grew up before and during the War. She had a terrible, flibbertigibbet mother and was mostly brought up by a stonily cold, icily respectable grandmother. So she emerged into the world of post-war London, a young and now-independent adult who had never really experienced love.

And then – in 1948 – she met a glamorous, exotic, beautiful and warm woman, Faye, with whom she instantly bonded. Faye just happened to be one of the most hard-working and successful prostitutes working in Soho and she needed a maid. Barbara became that maid.

Barbara’s book tells the story of that friendship. The author was in her 80s when the book came to us. It was vastly long and discursive. It didn’t really know what story it was meant to be telling. With a younger author, we’d have simply given guidance and let her do the work. Given Barbara’s age, I essentially took on the work myself, cutting out the excess material and stitching the remaining parts back together.

Barbara had gone on from maid-ing in Soho to achieve plenty in her life, but when I told her that we’d sold her book for good money to a major publisher, she was thrilled. We sat in her sunny Ealing garden and she waved a cup at me and said, “Harry, this will be the crown of my life.”

That book went on to be a beautifully well-published bestseller.

Another book I especially remember was Please Don’t Make Me Go, a story with a lousy cover and a weedy title (both chosen by the publisher to line up with the Misery Memoir kitsch, then very much in vogue.)

The author, John Fenton, was a tough, smart man. His book was a brutal, brilliant account of his time in a young offenders’ institution – he’d been sent there, on the basis of no actual offence, by a dad who just wanted rid of him. The book ended with an astonishing climax: just as things were going to go very badly indeed for the young Fenton, he managed to break into the office of the man who ran the place and found material so compromising that the outcome flipped in an instant, from very bad to very good.

And? My conclusions from working with those books?

Simply that pretty much every technique that applies to a novel applies also to non-fiction, of the kind we’re talking about.

Dialogue? Yes, John and Barbara both wrote dialogue that could easily have lived in fiction.

Scene construction? Definitely the same.

Characterisation? Yes, of course.

And the structure of the story itself? Yes, yes, yes. That’s key. Both the books I’m thinking of had this astonishingly novelistic structure – and in both cases with endings that just linger in the mind.

Now, personally, I think it’s OK if non-fiction writers nudge their facts into shape a little. I don’t mean outright lie, but I do mean shape. Omit something if it occludes the structure you’re building? Skip over some things, bring others into much greater prominence? Yes to all that.

Build your story.

I do warmly recommend Sam’s course. (The guy is something of a publishing genius and it’s just brilliant that we can bring a bit of him to you.) But also:

The reason why I talk so much about novels in these emails is that pretty much everything I talk about applies to you non-fictioneers too.

Build your story. Write well. Have fun.

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FEEDBACK FRIDAY

If you’re writing creative non-fiction, then let’s have the opening page of your book, or any chunk that represents a kind of manifesto for the book people are about to read.

As soon as you’re ready, log into Townhouse and post your work here.

And those who are completing the Introduction to Creative Non-Fiction course too, don’t forget to complete the lesson assignments and share your work in the course forum.

If you’re not writing non-fiction, then you’ve got the week off. And a Happy Easter to you.

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Til soon.

Harry