I've started a Substack!

Mostly about how to make nonfiction storytelling work, but also a place to put all my new things that won't be in a book or a podcast.

Hello! I’ve started a Substack. It’s for two purposes. It’ll be where I’ll put all my work - writing, audio, video - that won’t be in one of my books or podcasts, just general Ronson things. But mostly, when I'm not out having my adventures I'm sitting here like a hermit monk, figuring out how to make nonfiction storytelling work. Ever since the pandemic I’ve been keeping notes about the process. They’ve never been published before and so I’m going to put them here, as weekly posts.

The reason I began making those notes during the pandemic was my realization that whenever I start work on a new book or podcast I feel like a beginner, having to learn it all again from scratch. So I thought I’d write it all down, like that man from Memento with the Post-It notes all over himself.

I sometimes wonder why many nonfiction writers have quite low ambitions when it comes to the way they write – basically seeing their books just as information providing services. The first chapters of many nonfiction books say, ‘This is what I’m going to tell you in this book’. And then they tell you, and then in every subsequent chapter they just tell you the same thing in more detail. If a novelist did that you’d be outraged.

So the notes I’ll post here will be for nonfiction writers with different ambitions to that, who want their books or podcasts to feel as gripping as novels. Novelists think about what to say and what to leave unsaid, about forward momentum and cliffhangers. Those are the things you want when you’re sitting on a beach. You want a page turner. Also, in novels we expect the protagonists to go through life changing experiences. So why not ask that of nonfiction writers too?

So this won’t only be about the nuts and bolts of journalism – suggestions on the best ways to approach interviewees, and so on - but also about how to make your writing feel a certain way.

I’m deep into writing my new book, so I’m thinking a lot about that right now – how to make a book feel entirely new, its own thing, not some facsimile of a nonfiction book. In short: how can you tell a story that nobody but you would write?

Although these posts will, I hope, be especially helpful for nonfiction writers and podcasters, they’re intended for everyone. Given how inseparable my work is from everything else in my life, they’ll no doubt evolve into memoir and just general thoughts about the way the world is falling apart and, fingers crossed, coming back together.

And so, along with all the non-storytelling workshop things I’ll post here, I’ll make a real effort to answer questions like:

How do you find your theme – the world you want to write about?

How do find stories that‘ll work within that theme?

How do you turn those stories into an engine – a narrative to keep people reading?

Who are your characters and how do you convince them to talk to you?

How much research should you do before going out into the field?

How do you do you get your story commissioned? What’s the best kind of pitch? Should you try and get someone to commission your story first, or should you just get started and worry about that later?

What kinds of experiences should you be having when you’re out there gathering your material? How do you deal with the anxiety of it all?

Should you put yourself into the story as a character? And, if you do, how can you do that without making it all about you?

How to make the writing as good as possible.

When do you know you’re past the point of no return on a book?  How do you know when a sentence is finished? How do you know when the whole thing is finished?

There are three different types of membership. Free subscribers will get at least one free post a month. Paid subscribers will get one in-depth post each week about the nonfiction storytelling process, and any other random stuff, plus access to my private chat channel, which will be a place to meet each other and post questions for me - which I’ll try to answer in upcoming posts.

You can also become founding members, but I haven’t worked out yet what you’ll get for that. Probably not meet and greets because I don’t like being touched.