Nicolas Cole argues nonfiction shouldn't be judged as simply good or bad. Instead, measure it on a spectrum: how well does it answer the reader's actual questions. Voice and style matter less than whether the piece delivers the information people came for.
I think this is what people miss about nonfiction. It's not that the thing you wrote was bad and the thing I wrote was good. I think that's a very reductive way of looking at it. Nonfiction is not really, like, good or bad. I think it's much more helpful to look at the spectrum of value and go, "The thing you wrote was less valuable, and the thing that I wrote was more valuable, and there are very explicit reasons to why." We're not talking, like, subjective, like, "Oh, one person likes your voice and another person likes my voice." The subjective variables are not what matter. Nonfiction is a game of answering people's questions. That's all it is.
What Every Writer Gets Wrong About Their Audience #writing #creator #writingtips
