Which is harder to write: fiction or non-fiction?

 I have been fortunate to have published both non-fiction and fiction as well as many articles over the years. My first publishing came with non-fiction as I self-published six books before focusing on writing fiction. I’ve been asked this question a couple of times and I want to get my opinion out there before focusing on specific topics. The big difference between these types of books is that one is based on facts and information and is objective and the other is entirely or almost entirely made up and is subjective.

At first thought you might think that being able to write about your own characters and plot and making a story up from scratch sounds easier than adhering to writing about facts and information, but both have their easy and hard aspects. Books in the non-fiction genre tend to be shorter than those in fiction depending upon what type of fiction you are writing. 

In writing a non-fiction book (I’ll talk about how to write them in a future blog post) there is more structure since the story you are building comes from preexisting information and I tend to use outlines more heavily than with fiction. There really isn’t much of a plot but the book still must have some pacing and flow to it, so it is readable and makes sense while keeping the reader’s interest.

Fiction has many elements to it beyond the plot and you have to create characters that drive that plot forward and that are believable and evolve from the beginning to the end. There is also the point of view of those characters, a conflict, exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, setting, pacing, flow, hooks, and more that need to be put together in a way that makes sense and keeps the reader’s interest from beginning to end to make the book successful. 

Yum!

In writing non-fiction there is a lot of research that goes into each topic. Some books might have a lot of opinions or personal experience, but other books might contain a lot of references that refer to specific information presented within the book. Even if you’re writing a cookbook, it would be helpful to conduct research on whether that caramel brownie cheesecake recipe is really any good before publishing it.

Granted, fiction may also contain a lot of research that goes into storytelling or building a character. A lot of science fiction seems to be just made up and has no real research behind it, but I would think most authors take a little time to research some of the things they talk about within their books as I do. I researched 1970s and 80s Ford Broncos for an upcoming book where I downloaded and went through several model year booklets. I probably spent an hour determining what kind of vehicle I wanted to use for a character before researching the car in more detail. But that’s just me.

I would have to say that overall non-fiction is easier for me to write. This is since I have written six of those and only a little bit of fiction. However, I hope that as I evolve as a writer and author that this shifts more toward fiction. Just because non-fiction might be easier to write does not mean it is more fulfilling than fiction. To me nothing beats creating something from nothing versus structuring something based on existing information, but non-fiction is fulfilling in its own way, and I may eventually write more in that genre.

Do you have a question about writing? I am currently writing basic blogs based on questions I have been asked as a writer. From here I am slowly moving my way to more broad topics that discuss writing and being an author. My goal is to provide an area for new writers to get a basic understanding of the art of writing without an agenda or strict ways of doing things that I have read and heard through the years.