Do you want to write a non-fiction book? Perhaps you’d like to write your autobiography. Maybe you’re fascinated by the life of someone else and want to commemorate them with a biography. Or are you an expert on a topic that you’d like to share? Whatever your reason for learning how to write a non-fiction book, this course is ideal professional development for you.

You’ll learn how to write commercial non-fiction for print, broadcast, and digital channels in this online writing course. The course covers how to write a non-fiction book, magazine articles, blogs, news items, memoirs, biographies, and more.

Learn how to write on many different topics, including crime, travel, health, leisure activities, food, diet, and wellbeing. This course also covers fact-based storytelling techniques, copywrite infringement and protecting your work, contracts, and publishers, how to make writing profitable, navigating legal systems, and sales and marketing for writers.

So, if you’re an aspiring writer who wants to improve your non-fiction writing skills, look no further than this online writing course.

What You’ll Learn

When you study our course on how to write a non-fiction book, you will gain the following learning outcomes:

• Understand the scope and nature of commercial and professional non-fiction writing in print, electronic and broadcast media.
• Distinguish between different forms of non-fiction writing used in different contexts, including different industries and disciplines, used in broadcast media, print media, and electronic media.
• Learn how to write fact-based stories.
• Understand how to write non-fiction as a business.

Formulate and create:

• News writing for different applications.
• Travel writing for different applications.
• Biographical writing for different applications
• Sports, hobbies, and related writing for different applications
• Food writing for different applications
• Wellbeing writing for various applications.

And more!

Why Learn How to Write a Non-Fiction Book?

Non-fiction writers have many opportunities to secure work, from writing feature articles for print and online magazines to autobiographical writing. So, why study how to write non-fiction?

• Learn how to write across multiple genres
• Discover how to adapt your writing habits and style for different purposes
• Develop a thirst for research (and know how to use it effectively)
• Learn how to recycle your research to produce multiple versions of their work
• Adopt a more commercially minded approach to your writing

What is Creative Non-Fiction?

Creative non-fiction, also known as narrative non-fiction, is a term used to describe crafting a compelling true story using creative techniques. The term covers memoir, history, true crime, travel writing, biography, autobiography, literary or personal essays, lyric essays, literary journalism but excludes news, poetry and fiction.

Creative non-fiction is told in the first person, as the author’s voice is a crucial part of the work. As with all non-fiction, these works are based on facts, whether verifiable or personal memory or reflection. The best works of creative non-fiction use the author’s own experience.

When you learn how to write creative non-fiction, you’ll discover that it’s also similar to fiction. Like works of fiction, creative non-fiction has a narrator, characters, plot, dialogue, scenes, figurative language, and sensory elements. The narrator may speculate and use their imagination but remains truthful.

 

10 Creative Non-Fiction Books (For Inspiration)

 

1. Phosphorescence – Julia Baird

A national bestseller, Phosphorescence is a beautiful, intimate and inspiring investigation into how we can find and nurture within ourselves that essential quality of internal happiness – the ‘light within’ – which will sustain us even through the darkest times.

2. The Gifts of Imperfection – Brene Brown

Atlas of the Heart explores eighty-seven emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human and walk through a new framework for cultivating meaningful connection.

3. Gum: The Story of Eucalypts and Their Champions

From award-winning author Ashley Hay, this new edition of Gum is a powerful and lyrical exploration of these magical, mythical, medicinal trees and the story of new worlds, curious people, and big ideas.

4. Signs & Wonders – Delia Falconer

In Signs and Wonders: Dispatches from a Time of Beauty and Loss, Delia Falconer searches for ways to describe how modern, developed societies are increasingly enthralled by nature at the same time as we’re annihilating it

5. You’re Doing it Wrong – Kaz Cooke

You’re Doing it Wrong is an outrageous tour through the centuries of bonkers, and bad advice handed down and imposed upon women, told as only Kaz Cooke can – with humour, rage, intelligence, and wit.

6. The Psychics Test – Gary Nunn

Award-winning journalist Gary Nunn investigates psychics, mediums, and astrologers to understand their uncanny, under-investigated, unregulated power.

7. Wasted: A Story of Alcohol, Grief & Death in Brisbane

Wasted is a vital, poignant piece of social commentary and is essential reading for every Australian who drinks. This devastating personal story of loss and grief is also an unflinching examination of the damaging drinking habits of young Australians and of a society that not only permits but encourages them.

8. The Care Factor – Ailsa Wild

The Care Factor tells the story of one incredible nurse – one among many – who chose to meet an unprecedented global health crisis on the frontline.

9. Remember Me – Liz Byrski

Remember Me is Liz Byrski’s own story — a story that will resonate with anyone who has ever been in love.

10. Because We Are Bad – Lily Bailey

A vivid, darkly funny, moving, and uplifting account of a young woman’s struggle with OCD.

 

Learn how to write a non-fiction book and craft creative and compelling true stories with our Certificate of Non-Fiction Writing.