In recent years, non-fiction writing has become a trend in China, from concept introduction to writing practice to writing movement. In terms of publishing media, a large number of news media such as Southern Weekly, China Youth Daily, Southern People Weekly, Zhi Clan, Esquire and China Entrepreneur are enthusiastic about non-fiction writing. Book series such as "Reading Library", "Single Reading" and "Noon Story" are committed to publishing and disseminating non-fiction works. New media platforms such as Tencent's "Guyu Documentary", NetEase's "Human World", Interface "Noon Story", Chinese Sandwich and Phoenix.com's "People with Stories" are designed to promote non-fiction. From the perspective of writing groups, in addition to professional journalists and independent writers engaged in non-fiction writing, a large number of amateur authors have joined the ranks of non-fiction writing, strengthening the power of non-fiction writing groups, and making non-fiction writing free from the limitations of professional journalists or writers, and becoming a writing movement in which both professional writers and amateur writers can participate. So, what exactly is non-fiction writing, how is it different from traditional fiction writing, and why is it becoming the darling of writing in China today. Nonfiction writing, as the name suggests, is the activity of writing based on the premise of "facts". Nonfiction writing has many aliases, such as New Journalism, Narrative Journalism, Literary News, Long News, Nonfiction Creative Writing, Feature Writing, etc. Nonfiction writing is not yet a rigorous, scientific, well-defined concept. The 2nd edition of Merriam-Webster defines nonfiction writing as a branch of literature whose content is based on reality and facts, and that deals with or provides ideas in the form of narrative prose, including biographies and historical articles, as opposed to fiction literature, and distinct from poetry and comedy. 3175048 American non-fiction writer Peter Hessler believes that "non-fiction is real and cannot be made up"3175049. Li Haipeng of China believes that "non-fiction writing" must meet the two criteria of "truth" and "literature", that is, everything that appears in the article must be true, including "real events", "real people" and "real phenomena". 3175050 addition, compared with traditional news writing's stylized and boring expression of "facts", non-fiction writing encourages writers to create freely and values the reader's reading experience. In The Art of Facts, the British literary critic Barbara Lounsberry articulated four characteristics of nonfiction writing: First, recordability. She argues that nonfiction comes from real-world "factual" records. Second, exhaustive research. Nonfiction writing establishes the credibility of a narrative through observations, investigations, interviews, and documentary verification. Third, the scene. Barbara Rawnsbury emphasized the importance of reconstructing the scene. Fourth, meticulous writing. Beautiful language is a literary feature of nonfiction writing. Although the expression varies, most writers agree that nonfiction writing should be based on the 3175051 of "real events". Non-fiction is not done in a confined space, but through in-depth interviews and complex material studies. The story in the non-fiction article must be true and contain facts that have been verified. Nonfiction writers can choose and organize facts to achieve a writing topic, but no matter how they are presented, the writer should write based on "facts". Under the strict adherence to the principle of "facts", non-fiction writing should also draw on the basic techniques of literary creation, such as scene setting, voice, details and character development. From the above, we can see that the concept of non-fiction writing refers to a literary creation activity based on "facts", which borrows the form of virtual dialogue and uses a storytelling narrative method to reflect real historical figures and events. As Yuan Ling said, non-fiction writing is writing that has both "literary significance" and "factual significance". 3175052 in terms of writing content, non-fiction writing includes biography writing, business writing, news writing, scientific writing, environmental writing, lifestyle writing, culinary writing, health writing, pet writing, handicraft writing, home decoration writing, tourism writing, religious writing, art writing, historical writing and other intersecting and different social life fields, some sociological academic works because of their strong narrative, such as "The Story of Lin Village", "Golden Wings", "Silver Wings", "Small Town Hustle" etc. can also be classified as non-fiction. Unlike fictional writing, which is based on "imagination", non-fiction writing constructs "authenticity" around "interviews". Real events, real experiences, real experiences are the basic requirements of non-fiction writing. Judging from the practice of non-fiction writing at home and abroad in recent years, compared with fictional literary writing, non-fiction writing has five characteristics: content authenticity, expression literature, formal narrative, immersion and thematic margin. These characteristics distinguish nonfiction writing from fictional texts, and are also the cause of the unique reading experience and aesthetic characteristics of nonfiction writing. Authenticity is the primary characteristic and basic criterion of non-fiction writing. American non-fiction writer He Wei said, "What fascinates nonfiction writing is precisely because it can't make up stories." It seems that this lacks more creative freedom and creativity than fiction writing, but it forces the author to dig hard for facts and gather information, and the creativity of non-fiction writing is contained here 3175053. Non-fiction writer Yuan Ling believes that "non-fiction provides a kind of vitality for literature, so that characters and stories have a certain positivity, reducibility, can correspond to specific environments, and retain reliable real experiences and living places." "3175054 excellent non-fiction works, such as Liang Hong's "Notes on Leaving Liang Zhuang", Ding Yan's "Factory Girl", Zhang Tonghe's "Working Girl", Yang Xianyi's "Remembering the Year with Leaky Ship and Wine", Yang Xianhui's "Chronicles of Jiabiangou", Yu Zhen's "Nie Qianbian Criminal File", and Qi Bangyuan's "Giant River" are all works based on reality. The success of these works is a testament to the power of "non-fiction". The improvement of non-fiction writing to rigorous, old-fashioned, restrained, and boring journalistic writing style is that it attaches special importance to the use of literary techniques. Non-fiction writing uses narrative and rhetorical writing strategies and methods, emphasizing dialogue, scenes, details and psychological depictions to enhance the experience and comprehensibility of the work. The main expression methods of non-fiction writing, such as details, dialogue, scene reconstruction, character psychological description, character relationship explanation, and even story conflict construction, etc., are the characteristics of almost all excellent non-fiction works. Non-fiction writer Chi Yuyu believes: "How to carry out a more effective narrative, non-fiction needs to present a large number of facts, such facts often cannot arouse everyone's interest and attention, many times the material cannot be dramatized, lack of conflict, and even only a list of numbers." At this time, we need to use the technique of fiction, a literary creation, the purpose is not to change the facts, but to improve the efficiency of reading. 3175055 in "China, Less Medicine", Murong Xuecun describes the details of the hardships of life in pyramid schemes: "The daily vegetable money per person is only three cents and five cents, and you can only buy some rotten soybean sprouts, you can't get more than one handful of rice per meal, it's covered with moldy black heart cotton, bathing is strictly forbidden, washing your face with only a little water, even the foam for brushing your teeth can't be wasted, all of them are poured into a sewage bucket and kept to flush the toilet." "3175056 The combined use of these techniques enhances the credibility and appeal of the work. Nonfiction often has good or even perfect storytelling textual characteristics. This feature is also an option to avoid generalization of the concept of nonfiction writing. Therefore, in general, all works based on "real" writing cannot be classified as non-fiction writing. An expository essay on the operation of a device or an academic paper on a scientific and technological invention, although it reflects "facts", cannot be called non-fiction because they are not narrative. Essentially, nonfiction writing utilizes some narrative strategies to report on people and events. These strategies include first-person narration, the development of characters and dialogue, the construction of conflict and tension, the reproduction of scenes of events, and the emphasis on language. Excellent works of nonfiction writing, such as The Siege of Miami and Chicago, Trek to Bethlehem, Exhilarating Doping Experiments, Dispatch, In El Salvador, Space Heroes, Fire on the Moon, Frank Sinatra Caught a Cold, and Radical Hipster all have superb narrative skills. Rigorous nonfiction writing activities require writers to have a solid and informative interview process. In order to write "The Age of Mass Extinction", "New Yorker" reporter Elizabeth Colbert personally visited the global ecological scene, through a large number of interviews and investigations, put forward the view that the world is facing the sixth mass extinction. Howard Griffin disguised himself as a black man for writing "Negroes Like Me" and repeatedly took buses through racist regions such as Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. Even in New Orleans, Griffin passed through New Orleans twice as a black and white for an immersion experience. For his "Voices from Chernobyl", Russian non-fiction writer Alekseevich interviewed hundreds of people affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, including residents, firefighters, historians, scientists, officials, family members of rescuers, photographers, etc. In order to write a book about psychoanalysis, American writer Janet Malcolm listened to the hours of treatment of strangers. Liang Hong traveled to 11 provinces and cities across the country in order to write "Notes on Liang Zhuang" and interviewed more than 340 people. Murong Xuecun risked his life to cover the pyramid scheme organization for 23 days in order to write "China, One Less Medicine", showing readers how pyramid schemes can seduce ordinary people. In recent years, from the perspective of the practice of non-fiction writing in global media, non-fiction writers attach importance to some marginal themes ignored under grand narratives, and like to write about the focus ignored by mainstream media. Liang Hong's "Liang Zhuang in China" meticulously describes the current situation of rural life, exposes real crisis problems such as rural management, education, left-behind children, and the elderly, and the spiritual crisis of the devastated Chinese villages, helpless rural cadres, left-behind children, left-behind elderly, and left-behind women, and the religious issues in the countryside are thought-provoking. Xiao Xiangfeng's "Southern Industrial Life" records the real life in the southern factory in the form of entries, and the panorama records the part-time working life of migrant workers and their inner world and spiritual level. Li Tiantian's "Blind Date" tells the story of an eight-year anti-Japanese war journey in which an older leftover girl is forced to go on a blind date. Zhang Chi's Family History of a Uyghur reflects many acute and real questions. Guan Jun is the author of "Big Footprints" and "No Aftermath is Great", focusing on the fate of ordinary people in the context of the big era, and excavating and pursuing human nature. Li Juan's "Sheep Road" trilogy describes scenery, customs, and contact with men and women on the ranch. Non-fiction writers also focus on the underclass, marginalized characters of society who are not widely noticed. Since the reform and opening up, Chinese society has undergone rapid changes. The colorful and complex social life in China provides material and soil for non-fiction writing, which is very similar to the social background of the rise of non-fiction writing in the United States. According to the American scholar John Hollowell, the great social changes in the United States in the fifties and sixties of the 20th century led to the emergence of non-fiction literature: "Everything seems to be changing at a rate ten times higher than in the past, and artists lack the ability to record and reflect the rapidly changing society... The moving nature of everyday events of this period has advanced to the novelist's imagination. 3175057 many non-fiction writers have a clear understanding of this and have a special expression. He Wei sees China as a "bonanza" for nonfiction writing. Feature writer Li Haipeng said: "There are so many real events happening in China every day, and many real themes can be born from them." Guan Jun, editor-in-chief of NetEase's "Human World", believes that China is now a "rich mine of news stories." The non-fiction writer Liang Hong's discourse is similar to that of John Hollowell. "In just over 30 years, we have almost completed 400 years of Western history, and under this huge transformation, Chinese life has experienced a roller coaster of vertigo and rapid change," she said. The bizarre reality often makes people feel strange, more unreal than the unreal, everyone is in a divided and divided life, pre-modern, modern, post-modern, several lives, pluralistic ideas coexist, just a wall, may be a completely different life and scene. "3175058 social phenomena brought about by great social changes are inexhaustible subjects for non-fiction writing. The decline of critical realism in contemporary Chinese literature is also an important factor driving the flourishing of non-fiction writing. There is a strong tradition of realism in modern and contemporary Chinese literature, and this tradition has encountered difficulties in contemporary times. The reasons for the dilemma are both the drawbacks caused by the writers' association system and the challenges to the ability of writers to understand the super-complexity of social phenomena. Yuan Ling believes that the reason for the decline of fictional literature is that it "emphasizes its narrative for a long time, emphasizes its fiction, looks good, avoids real experience, and finally becomes something that entertains itself" and becomes a 3175059 that "lacks meaning". In the face of drastic changes in Chinese society, traditional writers have no time to discover, insight, analyze, precipitate, summarize and refine real life, resulting in a lack of performance in literature to reflect real life in a timely, vivid, vivid and profound manner. Writer Wang Yuewen once pointed out in view of the drawbacks of ungrounded literature: "Literature must truly reflect life, literature must think about reality and historical issues, and literature must shoulder social responsibility." However 3175060 however, the status quo of most contemporary writers working behind closed doors, detached from life, and ungrounded is difficult to change. In addition, reportage, which has always been entrusted with the function of "reflecting reality", has also encountered problems such as stylistic aging, lack of authors, and commercial erosion in recent years. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, reportage has been welcomed by readers for its news, literary and critical nature. However, in the past two decades, the style of reportage has aged, and the investigation technique and expression method are single, which cannot meet the deep pursuit of facts by contemporary readers. Even some reportage has been reduced to a propaganda style, becoming a "praise draft", "praise literature" and "sales literature", and has lost its realistic criticism. Wei Yi, chief writer of Southern People Weekly, said: "Non-fiction writing is to remove the golden light behind the characters written in reportage. I think this is too graphic, the reportage we see is all bling, with its own halo, non-fiction writing is to remove the 'golden light' that people have installed, to see what this character really is, this may be an angle of understanding. Li Jingze, a literary critic 3175061, believes that "in this era of massive information emergence, on the one hand, we know too much about the world, but on the other hand, we actually know little or even nothing about the world. What is fake? At the same time, we also want our understanding of the world to be not just fragmentary and fragmentary, but deep and concrete. We are able to understand the richness of the world and the richness of people in depth and concretely on a real level"3175062. Traditional news texts are good at relaying the skeleton and frame of news events in broad lines. The subject matter of news in news writing is a typical representative of the way of news writing. Generally speaking, news writing adheres to the 5W news writing rules. Specifically, news writing needs to explain "5W+1H", that is, who (Who), when (When), where (Where), what (What), why (Why) and how the process (How) and other factual elements are in other words, people, time, place, cause, process, and result. As long as the above factual elements are explained, regardless of readability, it is a qualified piece of news. This kind of orientation of news writing often sees "things" but not "people", and the situation of people in news stories and the larger cultural system background that restricts people's fate are not presented. This kind of news writing orientation cannot explain the complexity of news figures and news events, and does not help readers build a systematic understanding of people and events. Non-fiction writing makes up for this limitation, and investigative reports, explanatory reports, character features, event features, and long reports in the non-fiction writing genre spare no effort to explore the richer meaning behind news figures and news events under the premise of adhering to the "authenticity" of news, so that readers can realize the complexity of the world, so as to put an end to simplistic, flat, and symbolic interpretation of the world, and reach the real "real" realm. In the United States, although nonfiction writing has been around as a literary form for a long time, it has long been considered a writing bridge between fiction and poetry, rather than an equivalent way of writing. Novelists consider it to be the upper class of literature. They believe that the role of journalists is to dig up information materials and inspire writers. However, in recent years, writers' symposia, writers' conferences, creative writing projects have sprung up, and nonfiction writing has been published in a growing number of media outlets such as The Fourth Genre, River's Teeth, Nonfiction Writing, The Georgia Review, and The New York Times. The outstanding work of creators of nonfiction writing has strengthened the position of nonfiction writing. Some outstanding works have impressed fiction writers and readers have flocked to them. Travel essays such as Peter Mayer's A Year in Provence, Francis Mays' Under the Tuscan Sun, popular science books such as Deva Sobel's Longitude: The Man Who Sought the Earth's Scale, historical records such as Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman, nature reportage such as John Collecow's Wilderness Survival and Sebastian Jungger's The Perfect Storm, crime documentaries such as John Berrant's Garden of Good and Evil, and memoirs such as Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes and Mary Carr's Liars Club, among others, have raised the visibility of nonfiction as a literary form. 3175063 in China, the non-fiction writing movement is closely related to the introduction and development of Western feature writing by journalism. The first use of the term non-fiction was mainly a group of journalists who had originally focused on feature stories. However, with the drastic changes in the way of print media communication and the decline of the entire industry ecology, most of these journalists have left the media within the system to continue to pursue their dreams of writing, and vigorously promoted the concept of non-fiction writing in the fields of magazine news production and new media content production. In recent years, with the rise of modern news media, the establishment of business magazines, the growth of Sino-foreign joint venture lifestyle magazines, and the construction of new media platforms, non-fiction writing has more publishing positions. In recent years, media such as "Esquire", "GQ Zhiclan", "Southern People Weekly", "China Newsweekly", "Yoku", "Chinese Entrepreneur", "Single Reading", "Blog World", "Vista See the World", "China Youth Daily", "Southern Weekly" and other media have provided publishing channels for non-fiction writing. These media include newspapers, magazines, books, and all of them promote high-quality non-fiction writing. Compared with traditional literary magazines, these media have advertising revenue in addition to distribution revenue. In addition, some new media platforms are specially developed for non-fiction writing, such as "The World", "Noon Story", "People with Stories", "Caixin Culture", "Nonfiction Writing", "NONFICTION Horizon", "Gu Yu Story", "People", "Write a Story for You" to provide an online platform for non-fiction writing. The rise of traditional channels on these platforms has contributed to the rise of the non-fiction writing trend. Non-fiction writing breaks down professional barriers and makes ordinary people the subject of writing. Traditional literary writing is mainly dominated by professional writers, and news writing is mainly led by journalists and editors of the media. They are professional text producers, and the masses are positioned as readers. In recent years, non-fiction writing has not been designed for professional writers and journalists, but the amateur public can also participate in non-fiction writing and record the people around them. Non-fiction writing platforms such as "People with Stories" and "National Story Project" are all platforms for ordinary writers to write their own stories. "People with Stories" is a non-fiction writing platform launched by Phoenix.com, the concept of non-fiction writing is that "everyone has a story and can write a story", and believes that non-fiction writers "can come from celebrities, from professional writers, and can also come from peddlers' pawns, and promote small people". The National Story Project aims to "record the current daily style of China with true stories, and strive to discover and launch real stories that move people's hearts in daily life". The "Blue Clothes Workshop" column of NetEase's non-fiction writing platform "Human World" has set up the first writing workshop in China for front-line migrant workers. From this, we can not only see Guo Fulai, who came to Beijing from Hebei to work part-time, writing down the friends of the "rat generation" around him with unique brushstrokes, but also seeing the former fire brigade members from the Tianjin Port Authority, enduring grief and recording the 31 firefighter brothers who died in the disaster. Compared with professional literary creation and professional news writing, non-fiction writing breaks down the barriers of writing, overthrows the walls of writing, tears down the barriers of writing, and allows ordinary people to become participants in writing. The concept of non-fiction writing is based on "facts" and uses a storytelling narrative approach to reflect real historical figures and events. Nonfiction writers strive to observe, document, and produce illuminating and potentially meaningful texts by combining factual details with necessary literary speculation. Non-fiction can profoundly reveal people and events in a wide range of social life, and can reflect the complex and changeable real world in a real, timely, profound and even interesting way. Professor Yu Guoming believes: "The means of presenting reality by non-fiction, if done well, can actually produce more shocking power than fictional means from many angles, making the situation have greater power, which is the power of non-fiction." "3175064 non-fiction works have different reading values than fiction literature, the former focuses on excavating social and historical truth, and the latter is biased towards transcendence and aesthetics. Non-fiction writing has a rich reading experience that surpasses traditional news writing, and is more readable, rich and inspiring than traditional news writing. The rise of non-fiction writing in China reflects readers' dissatisfaction with the sharpness, breadth and depth of traditional realist literature reflecting social life, and their desire for a new way of writing to reflect the current social life in China, as well as the idea that media people and ordinary people want to record life, understand life and reflect on life. Today, with the highly developed online media, non-fiction works have more channels for publication and dissemination, and the writing activities of ordinary people provide a continuous source of stories for non-fiction writing. In this sense, what is about to unfold in the field of writing may be a "new record movement" about the world of words. This book is the first series of "Why Nonfiction is Possible: Interviews with China's Outstanding Nonfiction Writers on Writing Skills", which includes the writing experience of 14 non-fiction writers, including Chai Chunya, Chen Jianshou, Guan Jun, Yi Xiaohe, Liu Juexin, Xie Ding, Wei Yi, Xue Fang, Wang Tianting, Yuan Ling, Zhang Zanbo, Zhou Huacheng, Yan Haijun, and Tian Yi. They have different identities, occupations, and interests, but in the creative kingdom of non-fiction writing, their own thinking and writing practices have opened up the infinite possibilities of the social function and aesthetic value of non-fiction writing, highlighting the huge exploration space of non-fiction writing. Among them, Guan Jun, Xie Ding, Liu Juexin, Wei Yi, Xue Fang, and Yuan Ling are professional journalists, especially known for their feature writing, but their areas of concern are quite different. Some are still sticking to the high-quality content writing of traditional media, and some have expanded to other directions and depths. Zhang Zanbo, Chai Chunya, and Yan Haijun all have the nature of "touch shadow", and this "shadow" refers to the documentary. Zhang Zanbo is essentially a documentary filmmaker, but his ability to "dual-media storytelling" lives up to the title of non-fiction writer. In recent years, Chai Chunya has developed in the direction of long-form non-fiction, and Yan Haijun's attention and writing about the western countryside are unique. Chen is awe-inspiring with his steady focus, use of archives, and indifferent writing attitude. Yi Xiaohe is an expert in "storytelling" in the field of sports, and she turns "sports reporting" into "sports stories" from a woman's perspective, so that sports news has more social and human significance. Tian Yi is also a rural finance and taxation expert, and his writing pursues excellent storytelling under the premise of pursuing excellent professional standards. At the same time, his pure writing attitude is more like that of a scientist of thought and expression. The above-mentioned non-fiction writers have richly outlined the tip of the iceberg of non-fiction writing from different aspects, and it is hoped that more excellent non-fiction writers and works will be born in their footprints, and that the second series of this series will be released as soon as possible, which can make a small contribution to promoting the development of non-fiction writing practice. The author was in Shaanxi on July 22, 2017（AI翻译）