Creative non-fiction (CNF) borrows techniques from fiction to tell true stories in a captivating way. But writing fact-based stories poses challenges that writing invented stories doesn’t pose. Lynne Melcombe covers perhaps the biggest and most important of these challenges, finding the narrative arc, in another Editors Canada webinar. But narrative arc is not the only challenge.
Other challenges include writing dialogue, especially when you have nothing to quote verbatim; scene setting when you don’t know what the scene was or the scene was static throughout the story; character building, especially when you don’t have personal experience of your characters; making different timelines work together; and working theme, motif and universal messaging into the story.
This webinar will examine as many of these challenges as we have time for and provide suggestions for editors to help authors rise to them in ways that make their true stories the best they can be.
Presenter
Lynne Melcombe has been writing and editing for over 30 years. She does substantive, stylistic, and copy editing; proofreading; manuscript evaluation; and coaching. She works primarily on non-fiction, and copy edits and proofreads fiction. Recent clients include Caitlin Press, Harbour Publishing, Douglas & McIntyre, Greystone Books, Royal BC Museum, and the governments of BC, Alberta and Canada. Lynne has a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative non-fiction writing; a BA in anthropology and English; and certificates in editing, publishing and writing. She lives in Port Coquitlam, BC, with her little dog, Tessa.