Follow the Story: How to Write Successful Nonfiction [Paperback]

An indispensable guide to nonfiction writing from the Columbia Journalism School professor and Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist behind the bestsellersBlind Eye,Blood Sport, andDen of Thieves.

InFollow the Story,bestselling author and journalist James B. Stewart teaches you the techniques of compelling narrative writing, from nonfiction books to articles, feature stories, or memoirs. Stewart provides concrete directions for conceiving, reporting, structuring, and writing nonfiction—techniques that he has used in his own successful books and stories. By using examples from his own work, Stewart illustrates systematically a way of thinking about and executing stories, a method that has helped numerous reporters and Columbia students become better writers.

Follow the Storyexamines in detail:

• How an idea is conceived
• How to “sell” ideas to editors and publishers
• How to report the nonfiction story
• Six models that can be used for any nonfiction story
• How to structure the narrative story
• How to write introductions, endings, dialogue, and description
• How to introduce and develop characters
• How to use literary devices
• Pitfalls to avoid

Learn from this book a clear way of looking at the world with the alert curiosity that is the first indispensable step toward good writing.Chapter 1

CURIOSITY

We seem to be living in an age of know-it-alls: talk show hosts and guests, expert witnesses, pundits, gurus on every conceivable subject. The information age is exhausting. It is also dull, like a dinner party guest who never stops talking. In my view, this climate is anathema to good writing, which is rooted not in knowledge, but in curiosity.

This may seem paradoxical, since one of the primary goals of nonfiction writing is to inform. But I strongly believe that good writinlă*