GRIPPING NONFICTION WRITING
(expository, descriptive and narrative writing
all in one)
Carol Baxter is the author of six internationally acclaimed "popular histories" or biographies. She now teaches writing skills to genealogists through her Writing Fabulous Family History courses.
In her writing classes, Carol explains that there are four main literary styles:
- Expository — also referred to as the "encyclopaedia" style of writing, which is the main style used by genealogists.
- Descriptive — sometimes called "all that flowery stuff" (although it really isn't).
- Narrative — also known as "storytelling".
- Persuasive — used in advertising and in "how to" book blurbs.
Click on the links below to access more detailed information about the top three writing styles.
Writing gripping nonfiction
To write gripping nonfiction, we need to combine the expository, descriptive and narrative writing styles in our prose.
Two prose examples are provided below:
- The first uses the expository (or "encyclopedia") style to summarise the facts relating to a particular incident. It was crafted for this webpage.
- The second describes the same incident in a way that combines the expository, descriptive and narrative styles. It served as the prologue to The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller, which was described by Publishers Weekly (USA) as "a thrilling biography".
Read each example to get the "plot". Then read Version 2 multiple times, looking for examples of the "facts", the "descriptive details", and how everything is brought together to form a story.
Version 1: Expository style (crafted for this webpage)
In May 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St Louis across the Atlantic and into the history books. His epic flight launched the Golden Age of Aviation. It also helped transform the life of Australian housewife, Mrs Jessie Miller.
Version 2: Gripping nonfiction (the prologue to The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller)
Nobody could have foreseen such an unprecedented response.
From all over Britain, people converged on London’s Croydon Airport, lugging picnic baskets brimming with pies and buns and sugary cakes, and pulling out cards and novels to while away the hours. By mid-afternoon on Sunday, 29 May 1927, every approach was clogged with vehicles and pedestrians, a honking, cursing muddle. Trams and buses pushed through the crowds. Trains disgorged thousands more to join the eager multitudes. At 3.30 pm, when the long-awaited plane commenced its journey across the English Channel towards Croydon, 25,000 spectators already thronged the aerodrome’s perimeters.
Airport authorities watched apprehensively as wooden fences bent under the pressure. Still the people kept coming: 50,000, 100,000 . . .
At 5.52 pm, the control tower’s klaxon sounded its discordant warning. All eyes turned towards the horizon where a clump of dark dots had appeared. A moment later, a drone could be heard as if a swarm of bees buzzed towards the aerodrome. Soon, the dots transformed into an honour guard of three large biplanes at the front and three smaller ones at the back. Between them, Lilliputian-like, flew a sleek monoplane.
At the sight of the monoplane, the spectators’ mood changed. A sigh of satisfaction, of awe, erupted from thousands. Then they swept across the airfield, trampling wooden fences, knocking down iron barriers, surging through the police cordons, determined to reach the runway where the plane was about to land.
Officials, policemen, pressmen and photographers screamed ‘Get back! Get back!’ Airmen jumped into automobiles to try to herd the mob like sheep. If they failed to corral them, the pilot would have to abandon the official British welcome and land elsewhere in ignominious obscurity—not the celebration planned for the newly crowned King of Aviation.
As the monoplane circled the aerodrome, a strip of ground cleared amid the throngs of people and vehicles, allowing the pilot to swoop down and roll to a stop. The cockpit opened and a smiling man stood up and waved to the cheering crowd. America’s Captain Charles Lindbergh had just reached England in the Spirit of St Louis after his epic Atlantic crossing from New York to Paris, the flight that would launch the Golden Age of Aviation.
Never before had the entire world worshipped a human as if he were a god. In the words of a biographer, it was as if the man had walked upon water rather than flown over it.
The world’s extraordinary response to Lindbergh’s achievement was an epiphany to anyone who had ever dreamed of success or craved a more exciting life. One such person was in London that day, a petite, vivacious, twenty-five-year-old Australian housewife, with bobbed dark hair and mischievous brown eyes. In the years to come, she would move into Lindbergh’s aviation circle. Indeed, her name would also be splashed across the world’s newspapers although, in her case, partly through fame and partly infamy. Yet Lindbergh’s flight didn’t directly trigger the transformation in her life that began a few weeks later. Instead, it was something so small, so mundane, so ridiculously prosaic as a pat of butter.
