The Writing University Podcast

From its beginning in the 1960s, literary journalism and its writers typically acknowledged their contextual debt to the traditional questions journalists ask about the five “W's”—the who, what, where, when and why that lie at the heart of any good reportage. The difference for creative nonfiction writers lies in their ability to create a narrative arc that describes how those 5 “W’s” come into focus, which means that virtually any memoir or nonfiction work becomes a type of quest story. This lecture will describe why and how nonfiction writers should always be on the lookout in the midst of their quest for the mysterious sixth “W”—what it is and why it matters.