Workshop: How to Use the Craft & Elements of Fiction to Create Engaging Nonfiction: Deborah Heiligman

Deborah Heiligman is the author of 31 books. Her most recent book, Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers, won the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for nonfiction, the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for nonfiction, a Printz Honor, others.

Deborah's tips for writing nonfiction:

• Read fiction while writing nonfiction. You can't make things up with nonfiction, but many of the same elements in fiction can be used in nonfiction (scenes, story structure, openings, plot).
• Read like a writer.
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• Watch movies. Think cinematically, which will help you to write scenes.
• Listen to writing podcasts. Liz Gilbert, Longform, Tin House.

Heiligman also offered these plot structures to study (Google):

• Over coming the monster 
• Rags to riches
• Quest, (Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers) 
• Voyage and return
• Comedy
• Tragedy
• Rebirth