Non fiction writing: purpose, audience & structure

What matters most is identifying your purpose and audience. From there, that determines the shape (structure) and tone of your writing. For example, in this text on making pies as both a creative outlet and an outlet for frustration, the purpose is to showcase creative and innovative ways to deal with lockdown. With its edgy content (fuck this shit and a reference to cunt), it is definitely aimed at people who are open to acknowledging that swearing is part of the frustration process in lockdown for many people. Even though we have looked at it in class, we can't use the same language in our formal or creative writing, as a school is an environment where we are all expected to find alternatives to swearing. But otherwise, the format of the writing is to introduce a creative person, supported by photographs, with their challenge and their response, and then to unravel the backstory behind their decision, and give a range of examples to showcase their talent. The article finishes on an upbeat note, with Devoney Scarfe sharing her ideas on social media and brimming with more creative pie ideas, and the humour of her son only wanting something that is not a pie. This is a model which works reliably well when profiling a person.


You can see a similar but not identical structure in this article about the arts in lockdown. It starts with a very personal story, with a level of sensual (multiple senses) detail which helps us imagine ourselves in the profiled person's home. Then it links this experience to wider themes in the arts industry, and explores a range of responses people have made and concerns they still have. For each example, photographs and detailed examples are used to help us empathise with the people being profiled.


The issue of purpose and audience is distinctly different in the instagram post by Aigagalefili Fepulea’i Tapua’i. The expectations in terms of spelling and capitalisation rules are quite different on instagram compared to at school, or in a newspaper. But Aigagalefili uses repetition ("it's ironic") to persuasively develop her point that the expectations of students in poor schools and the actual opportunities for learning they had in lockdown are not fair and do not match. She contrasts both wealth and ethnicity using references to young people's lives in different parts of Auckland. Her writing is about equity, and it is much more emotionally confronting, as fits her purpose of speaking up about lives which have been ignored by the media.


There are many more examples of different structures in formal writing, or more accurately, non- fiction writing. If you can share with me what you are interested in writing about, then I can add more information to this blog post.