Storycraft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)

This is an excellent book because it provides excellent content and fairly comprehensive coverage on all the key aspects of narrative and explanatory nonfiction writing. In the last part of the book, it makes summary points on a variety of other nonfiction types such as short stories and vignettes, and discusses issues such as reporting and ethics.Both the book and the author definitely have the ring of authority. According to my Kindle, about 32% of the book is devoted to references and footnotes. I wish they were annotated footnotes, which are often worth reading, but these ones generally contain just the reference (which I'm sure the author thought was important to include).The writing was very good, as were the examples the author used. There were only a few places (mostly early in the book) where it felt like things were bogging down, or the connection between the body text and the examples was hard to find.The pace was fine too--it was neither a light nor tedious read, just about right for the subject matter.If I had to pick a nit, it would be in the (seemingly endless) number of words and sentences in the early part of the book devoted to scrupulously making full references to authors (full names) and their various articles to support one of the author's points. Many times the author would make a point, and basically say, "Joe X was a master at this in whatever, as was X in Y, and W in Z." No examples of writing from these articles were given for the reader, so it bordered on nothing more than name dropping to me.Having said that, the obvious gravitas and authority of the author made me believe that he was not the sort of person to just name drop for name dropping's sake. I'm sure he had a different intent (such as seriously meaning to support his points), but the utility of all the references was lost on me. Worse yet, it felt like more than a few such references were repeated in full, so I just skipped ahead when I saw another paragraph of that type.All in all, an excellent book by an author who clearly is a master at what he does. The book is worth every penny and every minute that I spent with it. I highlighted huge sections of the book, and was both surprised and pleased when I came to the big second topic of explanatory nonfiction, which exactly matched my current project, so I could immediately apply his excellent advice.I'd give this book 6 of 5 if I could. I gave it 9 (excellent, couldn't put it down) of 9 on my personal scale. I would strongly recommend this work to all writers, both fiction and nonfiction.

Hart's main insight is that a story is a story and has the same structure (narrative arc) of exposition, crisis, resolution, and denouement, and the same elements (theme, character, scene, etc.) whether it is fiction or narrative non-fiction. A narrative is just a sequence of actions; a plot by contrast involves the selection of meaning. Hart's foil is journalism which is relatively flat and has no narrative arc; fiction is not his foil.Hart's book was the first addressing creative non-fiction that impressed me. It even helped me understand my own write-up of a participant observation study I conducted among Pacific Northwest Native Americans in 1969. My study included a reservation that Hart's team wrote up much more recently as an example of a long story narrative non-fiction in 2003.In 1969, when Red Power was in the air, Warm Springs Reservation was known for its Red Capitalism. When I arrived on the reservation I immediately had a near head-on collision with a drunk driver. According to Hart such problems were still endemic in 2003. The patch of free enterprise apparently did not take. Hart was quite confident--shall we say politically correct?--that he had another patch for social problems. The young emotionally crippled adults, like the alcoholic mother, Dorothy, were "the broken link in the chain of mid-Colombian Indian culture..." Psychotherapy was the patch. Didn't it work with Dorothy?My point is that many researchers or therapists would not accept the cultural explanation of alcoholism or other social problems like crime or early death. Hart was being very uncritical in a major example in a book which emphasizes the need to be very honest in narrative non-fiction.With that exception, Hart's book is very impressive. Every element is defined, with its function shown, and with a compelling example. It is a happy mixture of his own experience and classics in the field. And he really is a self-trained coach of narrative non-fiction from the perspective of journalism.

I’ve always known a good story when I came across one but I didn’t understand why I liked it. Story Craft gave me the insight into the structure of good stories. The author saved the best for last. His chapter on Ethics was both thought provoking and convicting. It forced me to asked the hard questions like “How many times have I violated the rules of ethics for the purposes of persuasion?”After I write this review, I’m going back for a second reading of the last chapter. This is a book I will be reading many times over.

I'd bought quite some books on the art or writing story from Amazon. All those came with high recommendations. But I've got this thing whenever I receive a book, I flip through a few chapters randomly.. sort of reading whatever page I land on, just to have a feel for it.. if it don't grab me right away it never does (I tried forcing myself to read another great book on story, never worked).But this, it's filled with gems. I didn't even complete the thing, just going through the core of story structure -- really changed the way I see cinema movies for good.. I'd sit there seeing how the layer the pieces together and how they fit into the structure the book shows. Plus, the book gives snippet examples throughout to really bring the point home.

The book itself, as in the writing, is very informative and interesting to read.I've given 3 stars however, as the book was bound back to front - when I open the front cover, what should be the first page is actually the last page of the index, and page 1 behind the back cover. Not a huge issue, but sloppy printing from Amazon.

As someone who has made a living out of journalism and authorship for several decades, I know the bookshelves are full of useless guides to writing. This is very much a rare exception. I can't recommend it too highly.

Very good buy for anyone interested in script and story writing.

Briliant

He is now retired, but behind him a lot of experience.Evan I'd it is written more with journalists and writers for magazines, its advices apply also to telling true stories, not only to writing them. I tell true stories. I learned a lot from this book.