If you’re like
most educators, you’ve probably heard the terms narrative nonfiction and expository
nonfiction, but you might not be completely clear about the difference
between these two writing styles. Both are meticulously researched and fully
faithful to the facts, but they present ideas and information differently.
Narrative
nonfiction tells a story or conveys an experience, whereas expository
nonfiction explains, describes, or informs in a clear, accessible fashion. To
help you understand these two writing styles and the advantages and challenges
of each, I’ve invited thirty-award winning children’s book authors to post here
on Mondays throughout the year.
Half
of them tend to write narrative nonfiction, while the rest generally choose an
expository writing style. Each author will explain why they enjoy writing in
their preferred style and why that style works wells for the kinds of books
they write. They will also discuss the major hurdles they face as they create
manuscripts that are 100 percent true and verifiable.
Today, I’m going to begin the series by discussing why I write
expository nonfiction.
Many nonfiction writers enjoy
writing biographies or books about historical events, but I’ve been a science
lover my whole life. In fact, I consider myself a scientist first and a writer
second.
My personal mission as an author is
to share the beauty and wonder of the natural world with young readers. I want
to inspire kids to see and appreciate the world around them in new and exciting
ways.
To accomplish this goal, I often
write about science concepts, such as the surprising ways birds use their
feathers, how animals use sounds to communicate their thoughts and feelings,
and how different diets, behaviors, and body features allow fourteen monkey
species to live together in a pristine Peruvian rainforest.
Unlike biographies, these topics
don’t have a built-in chronological structure. Since there’s no natural
storyline with a clear beginning, middle, and end, narrative nonfiction just
doesn’t work. Luckily, expository nonfiction can have just about any text
structure you can think of.
Many of my books have multi-layered
text structures. For example, Summertime Sleepers: Animals that Estivate
is a list book with a compare and contrast text structure plus an opposites
text structure. You can see how the opposites work in the two double-page
spreads below. The word “but” helps to set up the comparison of ladybugs and
butterflies. And “groups” is the opposite of “alone.”
Throughout the book, the animals are presented in evolutionary order, which also happens to be size order.
Fourteen Monkeys: A Rain Forest Rhyme is a list book with a compare and
contrast text structure coupled with a sequence text structure. As readers meet
and learn about the various monkeys that share Manú National Park in Peru, they
also experience a rainforest day—morning to night.
Research shows that students who
love expository nonfiction enjoy richly patterned text, so layers of text structures
and purposeful ordering of information really appeals to them—even if they don’t
consciously recognize these features.
Of course, conceptualizing these
patterns is no easy task. It takes a lot of thinking and experimenting, and
that’s why writing this kind of picture book often takes many years.
Once I find the perfect structure,
I get to play with language, which is my favorite part of the process. As you
can see in the sample below, In Fourteen Monkeys, the main text is
presented as playful rhymes, while the secondary text is chockful of additional
details.
As I was writing, my goal was to
create text that delights as well as informs.
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3 Responses
I love that you are doing this series – I want to learn more about how other writers approach writing nonfiction.
Yes! This is a wonderful idea and I can't wait to read the next post.
I have jumped into the nonfiction arena and found this very helpful! Thanks! Figuring out the structure is indeed a fun challenge.