The definition of nonfiction:
Positively informative writing

Nonfiction writing is always informative writing.

By definition it is NOT or non fiction. It lacks fictive (invented, feigned, imagined) elements.

What does the genre have?

Information.

Nonfiction reveals facts and opinions (i.e., information) about people, places, situations, events or some other aspect of "real" life.

Reader discretion urged

The information may be:

• Biased

• Based on incorrect data, or

• Totally incorrect.

But the writer presents it as true and believes it to be true.

If I write that I put my library book on the shelf by the back door and believe that is what I did, my writing is nonfiction — even if the book turns up later in the bedroom.

Writer discretion urged

Readers are at the mercy of writers’ memories, perceptivity, and honesty. Readers have to develop skill at sifting information to find the least biased, most accurate, and most reliable sources.

As readers become writers and have to seek information to support their written opinions, they have to learn to evaluate information sources. I’ll open that can of worms later on this website.

Just to be perfectly clear, you need to note how I’m using the term writing. The writing I mean is writing in paragraphs, not things like a grocery list or even a list of sentences using vocabulary words.

Teacher discretion urged

In my experience, it is best to discuss prose genres using terms other than informative, expository, and persuasive. The terms may confuse non-yet-competent nonfiction writers and certainly do not add to their understanding of how to organize their writing.

All nonfiction writing is informative and expository, whether the writing sets out to persuade others to convert to the writer's passionately held belief or dispassionately provides instructions for assembling a bicycle.

If you use the words informative or expository as the opposite of persuasive, students will attempt to write persuasively without using any information or exposing any facts. They will also shy away from using a thesis in "informative writing" because the thesis conveys an opinion and they know there's a difference between fact and opinion.

3 ways to structure nonfiction

Writing texts devote gallons of ink to explaining ways of organizing nonfiction material. They list so many options that students' heads spin.

Students don't need to know all that up front. I prefer to tell students there are three major ways of structuring informative writing (strings, the inverted pyramid, and the persuasive or essay pattern) and that they will have to learn just one of them.

Bolstered by that comforting thought and a basic definition of nonfiction as informative writing, they are ready to be plunged into prose via expository writing.