by: Max Lieberman
When you think of a literary magazine, you may think of fiction; you may think of different poems and stories but nonfiction writing is also a large section of these magazines. There are magazines like Brevity that are strictly for non-fiction writing. So what do you write? What do you say? Well, you can use your life experiences to teach others how to overcome obstacles and or help teach a moral. Another thing you can do is write reviews and or interviews. Just from that short list there are already many things you can write about, but the one that might seem daunting is using life experiences to teach others.
When attempting this style of nonfiction writing, you first need to think of what you want to show or teach. Do you want to teach about determination and perseverance or about courage to come out and say something. For example, things I could write about are how playing team based video games have helped my communication with others or I could do something more serious with how coming out gave me a different perspective on people and on the world. Those two topics are totally different and teach totally different things, but they help show different sides of people that usually we do not get to see. So when thinking about a topic think about something that is going to stick with people, something they will remember.
Now when writing for these topics you want to be descriptive but also concise. You don’t want to be rambling about Aunt Sally for a whole paragraph. You want your readers to easily go through and understand everything that is needed for the time and situation. Let’s use the video game topic as an example. I am not going to explain every little detail about a game. I am going to give you just enough information, if any, to give you context for the story.
The last thing you need to look out for is also in the execution. You want to make sure your message gets across without actually stating it. It looks and reads nicer if you let the reader take what they want from your experience, because many people can get different things from writing. So even if it isn’t what you exactly wanted, but it is in the same vane or still a good thing, don’t sweat it. Also do not forget with practice comes perfection. So with these simple things, you will be a pro when it comes to nonfiction writing for literary magazines.