During writing workshops with young people, I urge them to take time to
think deeply about their research before they start writing. I suggest they
“put it through their head, and put it through their heart.”

This is a way of synthesizing and assimilating the information, so they
can view it through their own personal lens. Who we are as people—our passions,
our fears, our beliefs, our experiences in the world—can and should influence
the way we write about a topic.

Writers of narrative nonfiction often call this “finding a throughline.”
That term makes sense when writers are using a chronological sequence text
structure, but it’s not quite right for describing the process writers of
expository writing use. For us, it’s more about finding an angle, a hook, our
own special way of sharing the ideas and information with the world.

To learn more about this technique and helping students implement it,
please watch the video. And for even more information, check out the anthology Nonfiction
Writers Dig Deep: 50 Award-winning Children’s Book Authors Share the Secret of
Engaging Writing.

I’ll be sharing some recently published mentor texts by other authors on
Thursday.