A nonfiction junkie is someone who’s read a disproportionate amount of nonfiction versus fiction. Usually, it’s not that they don’t enjoy fiction, but it doesn’t feel useful or productive for them to read it.

They suffer the consequences when they try to become excellent at writing. Past a point, it’s hard for nonfiction junkies to improve as writers. They’re working with an unbalanced stash of resources from which to draw inspiration and solutions during the writing process—and some of the most powerful writing-related patterns & techniques are inaccessible to them, because fiction is the best teacher of those things. Even if they only want to write nonfiction, they still need the storytelling & wordsmithing skills that are most recognizable in fiction.

So as a writing coach, I sometimes find myself persuading people to branch out and read some fiction. 🐲

For example, one client engaged me to help him write a series of articles about sales. A few sessions in, he asked me what book I'd recommend reading as an input for his project (and for him to get better at writing in general).

I recommended the play Glengarry Glen Ross: the brilliant 108-page piece of writing that preceded what is still the most iconic sales-related movie, famously featuring Alec Baldwin ranting about having brass balls.

“But I'm asking for a book,” my client said.

“The movie started as a book,” I said. “It started as a piece of writing. A lot of people don't consciously realize that the stuff we see on screen starts with writing—you can read the play itself, oftentimes even a novel on which your favorite movie was based. That book-length piece of storytelling was there long before the cameras, lights, actors, or funding. It started with a book."

He paused, but was still doubtful.

So I went on: “You've read enough nonfiction for a lifetime. I think what will benefit you the most is reading stuff that nobody else in your position would read. Like, have you ever read Lord Of The Flies?”

“No,” he said, “and I’m gonna be real with you: everything I’ve read was to make me better—so I could actually figure out how to make money. My parents didn’t teach me, and I dropped out of college. So literally, when I had a problem, I would search for a nonfiction book to read. And I would read it, and I would start implementing it as fast as humanly possible. So I've never read The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, or any of those books. Like, I just watched Goodwill Hunting for the first time in my life.”

“Was it great or what?” I asked.

“Amazing! But I just never had time. When you're just trying to keep up and catch up—I never had time for anything that I didn't feel like was improving me financially or in my career.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Sometimes that’s necessary, but it’s still a steep price to pay. But now, you want to learn more about writing, and so you're in luck. Because when it comes to learning about writing, specifically, you're gonna learn a lot more from some of these fiction books.”

I typed out this list of 5 recommendations for him in our shared Google Doc:

• Lord Of The Flies

• The Giver

• The Chrysalids

• Glengarry Glen Ross

• Siddhartha

I added, “What you're describing is something I call nonfiction junkieism. And there are people who grew up with much more than you ever had—people who went to Ivy League preschools, who were born with silver spoons in their mouths, who are still nonfiction junkies through and through. They never read any fiction. But here's the thing: only a sliver of good writing even happens in nonfiction. The best storytelling happens in fiction. The best style happens in fiction."

So he agreed to give fiction a chance, and he tells me it's been eye-opening so far. 🤩

In other conversations, I’ve sometimes added that most of the greatest literature in history is fiction. Just look at the stuff that has stood the test of time and formed the foundations of culture. Books like Cervantes' Don Quixote, Voltaire's Candide, Gibran's The Prophet, Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Milton's Paradise Lost, Plato's Republic, and even Homer's Odyssey—these are all works of fiction, and they’re cornerstones of Western civilization without which our world would be greatly impoverished. The world of a nonfiction junkie is likewise impoverished.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear about your favorite fiction books ~ ellen@altamira.studio

- Ellen

✏️ Thank you Sam Nightengale, Parvaz Cazi and Adam Saks for reviewing this note before it went out. Permanent link to this post here.​