I don’t read Aaron Diaz’s webcomic Dresden Codak to learn about transhumanism. I read it because it’s a masterwork of visual art with a riveting story. Nonfiction writing is about the ideas, not the experience. Get to the point.
That’s a little strong. Nonfiction is about ideas, but we generally care about ideas because they are connected to experiences that matter to us (positively or negatively), and it’s hard to convey ideas without conveying any experiences. In fact, this very post occasionally stops to do things that I would call conveying experiences, such as when you relay Etirabys’s experience of you at different times. Arguably even you mentioning Dresden Codak in the previous sentences is evoking an experience. :)
Nonfiction conveys information.
Fiction evokes emotion. [...]
Though the ostensible purpose of nonfiction is the conveyance of information, if that information is in a raw state, the writing seems pedestrian, black-and-white facts in a colorful world. The reader, soon bored, yearns for the images, anecdotes, characterization, and writerly precision that make informational writing come alive on the page. That is where the techniques of fiction can be so helpful to the nonfiction writer. [...]
TRADITIONAL NONFICTION: New York City has more than 1,400 homeless people.
BETTER NONFICTION: The man who has laid claim to the bench on the corner of 88th Street and Park Avenue is one of New York City’s 1,400 homeless people.
That’s a little strong. Nonfiction is about ideas, but we generally care about ideas because they are connected to experiences that matter to us (positively or negatively), and it’s hard to convey ideas without conveying any experiences. In fact, this very post occasionally stops to do things that I would call conveying experiences, such as when you relay Etirabys’s experience of you at different times. Arguably even you mentioning Dresden Codak in the previous sentences is evoking an experience. :)
(Sol Stein, Stein on Writing)