What’s Your Story?: Jeff Guinn’s Road to Jonestown and Evan S. Connell’s Son of the Morning Star

Often, point of view (POV) in writing is discussed solely in terms of fiction, implying it’s not relevant for nonfiction writers. That’s simply not true, though. If you’re writing narrative nonfiction, you can use POV to tell the story more effectively. You can generate compelling tension, amplify your themes, and more through artful use of POV in nonfiction. This is particularly true with true crime, history, or historical true crime.

When I was in college, I took a grammar class with Elise Bishop that really changed the way I viewed writing. One particular week of the course looked at how Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood uses a change in verb tense to signal the confession scene.

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