Writing Dramatic Nonfiction

“Why does nonfiction have to be boring,” he sniveled.

“It doesn’t,” she replied cheeringly. “Haven’t you ever read anything by Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, John McPhee, Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, Mark Bowden, Laura Hillenbrand, or Sebastian Junger—just to name a few?”

“No,” he said popping open another long-neck Bud.

“That explains a lot,” she said.

Dramatic nonfiction—the relating of factual information in a manner that makes it as gripping as fiction—is the thrust of Writing Dramatic Nonfiction b...