Setting Scenes in Nonfiction

One of the section that we were assigned to read that particularly helped me when writing my profile essay, was Adam Hochchild's "Reconstructing Scenes." He spoke about atmosphere and how reader need to experience the scene through sounds, smells and even textures of important objects. As a creative writer, I am well aware of how a scene needs to be accurately depicted in order for your reader to understand where they are, who is there, what are they seeing, hearing, tasting and what moment in time is being shown. With non fiction, especially this profile assignment, scenes can be forgotten because we are focusing on the facts about the person you interviewed. Hochchild's chapter reminded me that emotion, dialogue, atmosphere and accuracy all need to be included in a non fiction piece to keep it original, authentic and entertaining for the reader.