Nearly twenty years ago, I decided to take a correspondence course in non-fiction writing. Having always written fiction, I felt the need to round out my knowledge base just a bit and what better way to do so than through schooling? I quickly found out that the main difference between the two genres was deceptively simple but very profound.

Successful fiction relies on tuning a make-believe premise so well that the reader temporarily suspends belief and absorbs the story as if it were happening in reality. A well crafted story envelops our imagination, makes us identify with the characters and believe that it -- whatever "it" is -- really could happen (or not, depending on the genre, of course).

Non-fiction does not allow for creative license. By its nature, it requires a firm rooting in reality, in bare bones fact. And therein lays the trouble for many writers.

In this day and age of fierce competitiveness and immediate media, how does a writer write non-fiction without edging into fiction? He does so by doggedly holding firm to the facts and not allowing personal bias to interfere with the crafting of his article. Of course, this is much easier said than done. After all, we’re only human; we are naturally inclined to try to 'sell' our point of view to others by deliberately using biased or misleading language, or by subtly twisting the story to reflect a certain direction of thought. So for a small exercise, we shall re-visit Helene Vance's story prompt of "Mary had a Little Lamb" (“Fiction Writing: And the Plot Thickens… Creating a Powerful, Unforgettable Plot” Issue 9), but we’ll approach it from a non-fiction stance.

We have just been informed of a breaking story about a lamb and a schoolgirl named Mary who is trying to rid herself of said lamb. While we personally loath lamb -- except on our plates --, it's been a slow news day, and this could be a very good human-interest story. We grab our notebooks and pens and hurry over to cover the story.

The key to good non-fiction reporting is leaving out as much human emotional coloring as possible. So we must put aside our sympathy at hearing that Mary is receiving a fair share of grief due to smelling like sweat and sheep refuse from cleaning up after the lamb. We must overcome our extreme dislike of sheep in general. We must find a way to report this story in a way that will not only interest readers, but will also allow the facts to shine through without interjecting anything which might not be true.

In our investigation, we find that rather than being a nuisance by design, the lamb has become separated from its mother. Because sheep are a herding animal, he feels the overwhelming need to be with someone, anyone. Also, during the interviews with Mary and her teacher, we discover that the school is under-funded and has no air conditioning, a real problem on the very hot days. (In the course of writing one story, we may have actually stumbled onto another!) Mary, upset at the other children's teasing, says that she decided to find the lamb's mother and reunite the two in the hopes that the lamb would leave her alone. Once she did that, the lamb left her side. She no longer had to spend so much time cleaning up after him and in turn, she didn't overheat as badly and was able to return to her former life and friends. Now write all this down in a comprehensive, factual manner and submit it to the editor.

Of course, this is an extremely simplistic example. Few stories or articles in real life will be so easy or so uncomplicated to write.