Writing Tips - Writing Nonfiction

Jan Fields, ICL web editor,  has published in many and varied children’s and family magazines including Boys’ Quest, Highlights For Children, Shining Star, Crayola Kids, Ladybug, Single-Parent Family and Charisma-Life.  Though she began her career writing for adults exclusively, she was soon lured into the challenging world of children's writing. Jan has taught adult and children’s writing for over twenty years. In addition to this busy schedule, Jan co-moderates the busiest Internet mailing list for children’s writers and is the editor of Kid Magazine Writer e-magazine. She is a member of the SCBWI and a repeat speaker at local SCBWI conferences. Her articles about writing have been published both in print and online markets such as Keystrokes, Byline, Children’s Writer, and Children’s Book Insider. In her spare time, she sleeps.

"Where Did You Get That Information?"

by Jan Fields

If you do much nonfiction writing, you'll hear a lot about sources. How good are your sources? Do you have primary sources? Nonfiction is only as good as it's sources - meaning, everything in a nonfiction book or article needs the support of a good source. Now, if you happen to be an expert (or in the case of personal experience articles, if you happen to be the person who had the experience) then the need for outside sources lessens some - but it may not disappear altogether.

WHEN DO YOU NEED SOURCES

Anytime you state a fact, you need a source:

* In Iceland, steam from volcanoes heats homes.
* In an annular eclipse, a ring-shaped part of the Sun remains visible.
* Benjamin Franklin once worked out a magic square of sixteen x sixteen.

Now, you probably wouldn't source those facts right in the children's nonfiction because that would slow the pace of the prose and … well, kids don't care where you got the fact. But editors do. That's why you'll need a bibliography. Eek, are you getting flashbacks to your high school years yet? It's actually not that bad. A bibliography just shows an editor where the information originated and whether it's trustworthy.

I grabbed the three facts mentioned above from the following sources:

Caplan, Jeremy. Time for Kids: Volcanoes. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. 27.
Crystal, David, ed. The Cambridge FactFinder. 2 ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. 6.
Dash, Joan. A Dangerous Engine. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. 51.

So how did I know what format to use for that nifty source list? I cheated. I used EasyBib - an online bibliography maker that lets me save my list as an .rtf file (rich text) which I can easily cut and paste from for any manuscript need. You can find this fun source list maker at http://www.easybib.com - they have a paid format, but I just use the free one. It does everything I need for my basic sourcing of children's nonfiction.

HOW DO I KNOW A SOURCE IS GOOD?

A bibliography is only as good as it's sources. So, did I list three good sources above? Most magazines would be pretty comfortable with the two children's books and they would accept The Cambridge Factfinder since my fact (about the name for an eclipse where part of the sun shows) is fairly easy to source. But, there are many facts in the Factfinder that I would need a different source for. Why? Because the book is pretty old and newer information about a number of the topics exists.

The two children's books aren't bad sources - but they would be better as jumping off places to find even better sources. A Dangerous Engine has a great bibliography with sources I might like to track down if I were writing a lengthy piece on Franklin's hobbies - including a book series The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, which includes primary documents written by Franklin. That would be a great source!

The closer you get to the subject, the better the source. So for an article on Franklin - a source written by Franklin or someone who knew Franklin would be excellent. For an article on how people have made use of thermal energy, the best sources would be the people who come up with ways to use that energy. For an article on eclipses, the best sources would be astronomers. The further away you step from the subject - the less an editor will like the source.

A Dangerous Engine is better than The Cambridge Factfinder because the author went to so many primary sources, while Factfinder is reporting on reports, making the information several steps removed from those who gathered it directly. This same problem exists in electronic databases (available at some libraries). Databases can also help you find facts, but usually don't make the best sources for whole articles since the information is gathered together from the actual sources you need to go to directly. These source gathering books and databases can give you the bones for an article - but you'll have to go right to THEIR sources to get the meat.

TELL ME ABOUT WEBSITE SOURCES?

In general, websites are consider poor sources because they (1) change so often, making them undependable for fact checking, and (2) they usually depend upon poor sources for their information - sometimes passing exactly the same information from site to site - thus passing on mistakes as well, and (3) they so rarely cite their sources.

Still, this doesn't make websites useless. Good websites have source lists - thus arming you with source possibilities before you go to bookstores and libraries. Good websites can make you aware of who holds primary source documents - museums, historical societies, foundations, etc…and can tell you how to contact those places to get copies of the source. Good websites can make you aware of who are the experts in the fields and what institutions are backing those experts - thus making it easier to track down and interview the people actually studying your topic right now.

Plus, websites can give you an informational overview of a topic, thus getting you "up to speed" on the basics so you can better start on your own research.

I HAVE SOURCES - SO WHAT DO I NEED TO SEND THE EDITOR?

Send the editor a list of your sources - a bibliography. You can call it a bibliography or a source list (editors don't care). They also don't tend to be overly rabid about following a very specific format, but they do like writers to be (1) consistent and (2) thorough (give enough information that the fact checkers can track down your source.)

Do you want to become the nonfiction darling? Photocopy the pages you actually used…the ones where the specific information was found. On each page, carefully write in the bibliographic entry somewhere in the margin of the page [Title of book, author, publisher/city of publisher, publication date, edition number, and actual page number.] Writing the publisher information on the copies also makes it quick and easy to write the source list later when you're back in your home office with these copies - especially if you didn't bring home every book or magazine you used.

Then highlight the parts you actually used and send the page copies along with your manuscript. That shows editors exactly what your sources are and speeds fact-checking. Magazines like Highlights and the Cobblestone group love to see that kind of material right in the submission packet.

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