Fact and Fiction are two polar opposite genres. Fact involves stating the real incidents as they happen whereas fiction means letting the imagination wander. Last weekend at Blogchatter Writing Festival we discussed writing fact vs fiction with our community members.

We started with discussing the favorite non-fiction book and we had wide range of books to choose from right from ‘How to win friends and influence people’ by Dale Carnegie to ‘Quiet’ by Susan Caine.

Then, we talked about how should one approach writing a fact-based story. Most of us agreed that too much information is not required and thorough research should be done before sharing the facts.

Next question up was what role does interviewing real people play in writing a non-fiction book. As Tarang (@TarangSinha) mentions ,interviewing people makes the non-fiction more authentic.

As required for any genre,we talked about the key elements of writing non-fiction. Pooja () points out that personal opinions should be kept away. You could also use fictionalized narrative approach to present historical facts.

To conclude our conversation we talked if there is scope of non-fiction and how to market it.

In the end, Pratikshya makes a valid point that there is a scope for all genres nowadays and can be marketed well.