Making Complex Nonfiction Fun to Read by Vera Day I have an engineering physics degree. I totally get it. Nonfiction, especially complex or scientific subjects, can be boring. But if an author can connect to the reader on a more personal level by channeling the subject and its examples into a character, then it’ll be easier for the reader to grasp and more fun to read, too.
Say I want to write an article about holograms and their use in aviation manufacturing. I could talk about capturing the interference patterns that occur when a stabilized coherent diode laser with wavelengths from 407 to 647 nanometers meets its own light flecting back from an object it's pointed at… yawn. Or I could insert myself and my colleague Alana into the narrative and talk about how the previous spring we hiked around a tranquil lake with a surface as smooth as black quartz.
I threw a rock into the lake. Ripples flowed across the surface. Then Alana threw another rock into the water, and the ripples from her rock met and interfered with the ripples from my rock, creating weird wave patterns on the lake’s surface. A hologram is all about wave patterns that result when a laser’s light meets its reflected light bouncing off an object. On the water’s surface, the wave patterns depicted rocks. In a lab, wave patterns depict whatever object the laser illuminates, like an aviation component. A speedboat approached. Its waves overcame the little ripples from Alana and my rocks.
